Mushroom decomposes plastics

The type of plastic packaging after it is no longer used will be a disaster for the environment because they are very difficult to decompose. Ecosystems are at risk of 'suffocation' by this type of garbage.

Very complex and durable chemical bonding of products made from petrochemical technology helps them resist the ability to break down naturally. It has been estimated that since the 1950s, more than 1 billion tons of plastics have been released into the environment that hundreds of years later still exist without any other solution.

Now, good signals have come from the Yale University, Connecticut team, when they found fungi in the Amazon rainforest that could destroy the common plastic structure of polyurethane, according to the Daily Mail. Considered to be the most popular plastic, since 2007 there have been over 12 million tons of polyurethane materials used globally and the annual growth rate is 5%.

The fungus was identified as the endophytes living in plants in the Ecuadorian forest but did not harm the host, only when the host died, did they play a decomposition role. Endophytes tissue can be cultured to grow numbers and use them to break down polyurethane structure. Research has shown that these fungi also have the ability to decompose synthetic materials.

Researchers believe that more than 300,000 types of plants on earth can be the host for parasitic fungi, many of which are new to the scientific community.