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[elstongunn39]

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679201/fungi-discovered-in-the-amazon-will-eat-your-plastic

Fungi really are the panacea!

4 Likes New Wisdom, TBM, Sunshine and fairdinkumseeds like this.

[Ian Morris]

This is really awesome.

Imagine the flush of mushrooms from an entire landfill inoculated and cased with a layer of turf.  I wonder the mechanism by which the plastic is broken down?  If it is reduced to some of the hydrocarbon components it might also serve as a fuel source, albeit a likely dirty one.  Really fascinating stuff.

Bio-remediation is the way to go.

-Ian

[BubbleCat]

And imagine how confused this world would be if they escaped that landfill

I remember there was a project engineering micoorganisms that were meant to do exactly that, eat plastic. They did report some sucess a while ago.

[TBM]

If it can survive in the ocean then there's your fix for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Maybe research should be done towards that goal...

[BubbleCat]

And also on the effects, just because the junk isnt present in its current form anymore, it could always lead to follow up problems upon breakdown. The least would be fungal overcrowding of the big vortexes in the oceans

[23]

yeah like the simpsons episode where springfield gets invaded by lizards and they use snakes to kill them and after a while they end up havinga gorilla problem but no its very fascinating