We use polyurethane to make just about everything — garden hoses, furniture, the entirety of my local 99-cent store. It’s easy to produce, durable, and dirt cheap. What it isn’t is recyclable — there isn’t a single natural process that breaks it down. That is until a newly-discovered Amazonian fungus takes a bite.
Pestalotiopsis microspora (not shown) is a resident of the Ecuadorian rainforest and was discovered by a group of student researchers led by molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel as part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory. It’s the first fungus species to be able to survive exclusively on polyurethane and, more importantly, able to do so in anaerobic conditions — the same conditions found in the bottom of landfills. This makes the fungus a prime candidate for bioremediation projects that could finally provide an alternative to just burying the plastic and hoping for the best. [Fastcoexist]
Image via manzrussali / Shutterstock
LDX
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 9:48 PMcool
Timmy
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 11:02 PMLet’s hope this can really work -plastic is crappy for the environment
Prometheus
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 11:36 PMThis. Is. AWESOME!
Kris
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 3:25 AMHoly ****.
This is truly ground breaking.
MAKE HASTE GENTLEMEN!
Antonia
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 7:37 AMHow about testing the fungus first to make sure it doesn’t kill or help kill off Tasmanian devils, bees, flowers or any other life form we’ve grown to love.
Marty
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 8:26 AMthis is great news and all, but we need to think of the ramifications of introducing a species to another part of the world which it didnt originate from. For example cane toads in Queensland, etc…
Philip B
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 9:35 AMBRILLIANT! This is why we can’t be cutting down whats left of our rainforests
TSH
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 12:14 PMThis was my first thought. Rainforests and other natural “untouched” environments contain so much biodiversity that we simply don’t know about, and which has the potential for exploitation far beyond the value of the land (currently being cleared for farming and timber).
Deforestation is a far more important problem than climate change.
chugs
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 9:42 AMI call bullshit. it’ll take a decade to commercialize and we’ll discover its by products are more toxic then the shit they eat
monkeymind
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 3:58 PMSo from that point of view, since you already know, we should stop all research into Pestalotiopsis microspora now.
Oh, by the way, where exactly did you get your Phd?
ryan
Monday, March 26, 2012 at 6:34 PMHows all the wanker pessimists lie ‘Chugs’ with their negative nelly attitude toward something and proposing hypothetical negatives that NOBODY knows anything about. Take 5 boys, go and play in the traffic. This looks pretty damn interesting and I hope it does this plasticised world some damn good.!
AnthonyP
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 12:13 PMcould they be then used to create bio diesel?
Ash
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 12:22 PMI don’t know why everyone is worried about the dangers of importing this species of fungus. The solution is clearly for the world to export its plastic rubbish to the Amazon.
BigLaughingJim
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:30 PMIf its anything like other fungi used in bioremediation or just in general, the byproducts are enzymes (proteins) that are produced and left behind which are used to degrade the long chain hydrocarbon into simple sugars which are then uptaken by the fungus and metabolized into further fungal mycelium and CO2. The fungi used to degrade petrochemical wastes have been tested for residual nasties (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and have been proven free of them, and in cases of heavy metal wastes the mushroom are found to hyperaccumulate them in the fruiting bodies, thus removing them from the soil they permeate. Fungi are natures recyclers, I would feel very comfortable knowing the fungi were doing the breaking down of the plastics, liberating the otherwise infinitely bound carbons and allowing them to return to a natural cycle. Great find, great research, great future!
Rob
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 5:20 PMNow if we can teach the buggers to swim they will be able to clean out all the plastic trash in the oceans.
Pete
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 11:22 PMI’m all for minimising waste etc. but I don’t see rubbish tips as that big a problem, there is a suburb not that far from where I live that was built on a tip, nice houses next to lakes now, considered a nice area. The school I went to was built next to a tip and has the playing fields over part of the old tip, also considered a nice area. Aquatic facilities on the other side of what used to be the tip hosted the world swimming championships and use the methane from the tip to heat there pools…
Jonathan
Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 11:17 PMSo who wants to start a company mining landfills and fungus-degrading the plastic waste so that we can quit burying it in the ground and use the space for something else?