Plastic-Eating Fungi May Solve World’s Biggest Waste Problem

A group of Yale University professors and students may have discovered an unconventional solution to the earth's growing waste problem: fungi.

Participating in the university's Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, students engaged in discovery-based research, searching for plants and culturing the micro-organisms within their tissue. It was through this process that they came across fungi which can degrade and utilise the common plastic polyurethane.

The fungus can survive solely off of this plastic, without any use of oxygen. As polyurethane is a large contributor to our waste issue, the introduction of this fungi could have real potential. The results of the study have been published in the 'Applied and Environmental Microbiology' journal.

[via PSFK]