this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Environment
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What is the application for plastic eating fungi? I thought that burning is the preferred alternative if all you want is to reduce it to CO2. That was you get some energy out of it too.
Or is it hoped that they will be able to survive in the oceans and/or landfills that contain too many toxic substances to burn directly?
Well burning releases a lot of highly toxic chemicals for starters
Well, not for polyethylene if done at high enough temperatures. And I doubt that the fungi will like plastic covered in toxic substances. But maybe there is a price advantage there if you don't need to ship the plastic to a incinerator.
I didn't read up on it in detail but apparently incineration has some large disadvantages, only about 22% of all plastic waste is incinerated. So fungi could be useful for the remaining 78% so it might be more useful than I expected.