Plastic-eating fungi

In a world of screeching headlines predicting our doom, I bring you some good news stories for the environment. I’ll include the main link, but this is my favorite out of the bunch.

Scientists in Hawai’i are training fungi to degrade plastic.

Fungi have a superpower for digesting things that other organisms can’t, and plastic is among them. Sounds sci-fi doesn’t it?

Researchers Ronja Steinbach and Syrena Whitner, marine biology graduate students at the University of Hawai’i in Manoa, focused on fungi they isolated from sponges, corals, seaweed, and sand. They discovered the fungi will eat polyurethane, a common plastic. More than sixty percent of the tested ocean fungi had an ability to eat plastic and transform it into… more fungi.

AND these little superheroes are hungry! Some fungi increased their feeding rates by fifteen percent in three months, giving us hope for a possible breakthrough for ocean cleanup. The scientists are expanding their tests, feeding the fungi more challenging plastics such as polyethylene, used primarily for food packaging, and a large source of ocean pollution.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the setting for my heroic mermaid Jelly. Next time she goes home for a visit (perhaps book four), I’ll have to make sure she meets some fungi.

Or… fun guys…

It’s a set up for a good joke, isn’t it?

But, cleaning the ocean isn’t a joke, and I’ll have all my fingers crossed for these hungry fungi.

Read five great stories for the environment.

Photo credit: Syrena Whitner. Marine fungi in petri dishes in Anthony Amend’s lab.