General Article Plastic-eating fungi discovered

Topic Selected: Recycling
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A type of fungus that can ‘eat’ plastic has been discovered in the Amazon rainforest. Students and professors from Yale University found that the fungi can break down a common type of plastic known as polyurethane (PUR).

This is backed up by Mark Osborn, Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of Hull. He studied plastic that he’d buried in sand on beaches around the UK and found that it could be broken down by certain microorganisms.

These discoveries suggest that fungi could be u...

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