Amazonian Rainforest Fungus Eats Polyurethane, Potentially Solving a Big Landfill Problem

Yes the first knee jerk feeling is we get rid of trash.

But also in life plastics are a good thing.
The first thought came into my mind, what if I have a plastic heart, heart value or some other plastic thing in my body and I breathe this fungus thing?

I like for this fungus to work, but it has to be manageable too.

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Science sees no further than what it can sense.
Religion sees beyond the senses.

In other news, the rainforest was cut down to make room for a new landfill...

now why on earth would a fungus be able to metabolize polyurethane, and an environment where none exists in the first place? that's what I would like to know.

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why learn from your own mistakes, when you could learn from the mistakes of others?
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” -Albert Ein

Even if this was true, think about it:
What would the fungus exhale as a byproduct? Couldn't whatever gas it is be potentially dangerous as well? And though the recycling of plastic is very harmful with the release of carbon monoxide, we could still find a potentially safer way to recycle it.
Plastic is also very useful, and you can't just get rid of it until a substitute is found.
Also, how would people get the fungus and plastic in contact with each other? You'd either have to put all the plastic over in the rainforest, or ship the fungus to landfills if scientists couldn't just help it grow somewhere else.
But it would be pretty amazing if this was true.

well i hope if this is the new thing for getting rid of plastic its done in a confined environment dont need my plastic bowls eatin i would be one mad guy if i woke up and my midnight cereal bowl was gone...lol...

Life always finds it's way. It will be interesting when your window, attached to the walls by PU-foam, falls out of the wall due to funghi attack. Sometimes inertness is really useful.
Perhaps the politicians better should think about seeing the garbage as the gold mines of tomorrow and start to push recycling on a big scale instead of "landfilling" .

my guess is the so called "rubber"trees are why it can eat poly,natural rubber isn't to dissimilar to poly

It could cause another giant landfill problem though.

The liner used in most retired landfills to keep toxic waste from leaking into the ground water is made of what? POLYURETHANE.

This is as much a potential catastrophe as a boon.

Recycling is always an alternative…if people want to that is.

Here in Germany the garbage is separated into

Glass- deposited at drop off points located around the neighborhoods

Paper- special dumpsters or green garbage cans

Metal and Plastic---special “yellow” trashbags

Bio---vegetable, food and cooking waste goes in the brown garbage can

“Rest” garbage--- Grey garbage can. Anything that does not go into the other catagories….like a painted board or dry wall.

There is actually very little that needs to be landfilled here. There are incinerating plants in a lot of cities that burn the garbage generate heat or electricity.

I'd hate to think they let this go mainstream for application and didn't consider the ramifications of it being ingested and possibly killing someone. It seems obvious to modify the fungi or find a way to use the enzyme specifically instead of the fungus.

id like to the rate it eats it, possible byproducts, is it safe for human contact, and does it plan to take over the world?

i can see some scientist gene splicing that code for digestion into a bacteria that digests plastics...

I know of a team that's built a machine which uses a particular microwave frequency to break down rubber back into oil, very cleanly. But have they gotten any news?

this is awesome machinery for facing recycling problem greta thumbs up.. MUST University

This is an old topic but i'm still gonna post in it.

There are a lot of mycologists that collect different fungus's from around the world and do tests on them. There is a good chance that they found out that it eats plastic by accident. I'm sure the mycelium and mushroom fruit is safe for humans or else they wouldn't have brought this idea to the table.

As for getting the fungus in contact with the landfill, they would grow the fungus themselves then spawn it to the garbage just as you would do with an outdoor mushroom bed.

Some of you really don't understand much about mycology. Check out the youtube video "paul stamets, 6 ways mushrooms could save the planet". It's pretty cool.