In 2012, students from Yale University discovered a rare species of mushroom that can eat plastic. The mushroom is called Pestalotiopsis microspora and it comes from the Amazon rainforest. The fungi are capable of surviving on plastic alone! It consumes polyurethane (the main ingredient in plastic products) and converts it into organic matter.
It’s like George Carlin said in his famous “Saving the Planet” standup comedy act:
The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself…
The fact that they can also live without oxygen makes them a perfect candidate for cleaning up landfills. However, if that’s too grand a task for the mushrooms to carry out, scientists believe their plastic consuming skills could be applied in the household setting. They envision a world where at-home recycling kits could be a part of the average kitchen appliances set up, maybe right along with a stove and fridge for instance. In addition, community recycling centers could have fungi systems built in to utilize this process.
Now here’s the fun part… they are edible too! A study was conducted by Katharina Unger of Utrecht University for LIVIN Studio to see what mushrooms can consume polyurethane. It turns out that this Amazonian fungus is not the only one. There are several other species of mushrooms that can eat plastic, and some of them are common, such as the oyster mushroom, which is also edible. According to Unger, once the mushroom has eaten everything up, there is no plastic left in the finished product (the mushroom). She says they taste “sweet with the smell of anise or licorice.”
Unger even created a device that can grow these edible plastic-eating mushrooms called the “Fungi Mutarium”. It is like the ‘at-home recycling kit’ prototype.
On the project’s Vimeo page she describes the projects as such:
Fungi Mutarium is a prototype that grows edible fungal biomass as a novel food product. The “FUs” are filled with plastics. After a couple of weeks, they can be taken out to be prepared and eaten. Fungi Mutarium is a conceptual device that presents ongoing research and is currently not a commercially available product.
For now, more studies are needed to determine the safety of feasting on these mushrooms, but if found to be safe they could solve two problems in one go – hunger and the plastic pollution crisis!
And the benefits don’t stop there…
Another report by scientists at the Kew Gardens in London found that not only can mushrooms help break down plastic, but their finished products (if not eaten) can also be used to create furniture and building materials (“mushroom bricks”). They also confirmed that fungi are able to remove pollutants from the soil as well as enable the conversion of waste into biofuels.
Tom Prescott, Senior Researcher at Kew Gardens, explained:
The State of the World’s Fungi report has been a fascinating look into the fungal kingdom, revealing how little we know and the huge potential for fungi in areas as diverse as biofuels, pharmaceuticals and novel materials […] Fungi are being considered as a potential sustainable source for building materials, with companies in the US researching the possibility of expanding this market.
In the end, whether the mushrooms consume our plastic to become our food, consume our plastic to get turned into something useful, or consume our plastic and get thrown into compost and turn into soil, the end result is less plastic on the planet which is exactly what this world needs.
