Wood-munching fungi can break down common type of single-use plastics

Wood-munching fungi can break down common types of plastic, Fungi isolated from rotting hardwood trees can break down sheets of low-density polyethene, one of the most abundant plastics on Earth Fungi that typically decay hardwood trees have been found to break down polyethylene, a plastic used in shopping bags, food wrap and bottles. Hardwood trees are notoriously resistant to decay. However, a small number of fungi can attach to these trees and degrade the lignin, a strong polymer key to wood structure, in their trunks.

“Lignin is the hardest natural polymer on Earth,” says Renuka Attanayake at the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka. “If the fungi can degrade lignin, they must have a powerful battery of enzymes.”

Attanayake and her colleagues decided to investigate whether these fungi could decompose polyethene, one of the most abundant plastics on Earth. The team collected small pieces of decayed hardwood from the Dimbulagala dry zone forest reserve in Sri Lanka. They isolated the fungi from the wood in the laboratory and identified 21 species.

Each fungus was incubated with sheets of low-density polyethene between 28 and 30°C. They repeated this in the presence and absence of hardwood.