Out of all the plastic ever made–an estimated 8.3 billion metric tons–most of it still exists as waste in some form, whether that’s in a landfill or in the shellfish or sea salt that you eat. On its own, it typically takes hundreds of years or more to degrade.
“The fungus secretes enzymes that degrade the plastics, and in return, the fungus gets food from it by dissolving the plastics,” says Sehroon Khan, a postdoctoral researcher at the World Agroforestry Center and lead author of a paper about the process.
Other organisms could also help. Wax worms, for example, which evolved to eat wax in beehives, can eat polyethylene trash such as plastic bags. The enzymes that the species uses could potentially be engineered at scale to clean up waste. Japanese researchers discovered a bacteria that can digest plastic bottles, which could also potentially be used to process waste–though the researchers also noted that it may not be any better for the environment than just recycling the bottles in the first place.
Roughly half of all plastic becomes trash in less than a year. At current growth rates, there may be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills by 2050, and more plastic in the ocean may outweigh fish.