I'm not "chitin", a way, away from plastics.

[WhatTheHey]

      Well here is something going the right way.  Scientists are looking into using waste to manage waste. Two birds with 1 stone.
    Yep there may be a way to utilize leftover shellfish waste to get rid of everlasting plastics.  Crustaceans' hardy shells contain chitin, a material that along with its derivative chitosan, offers many of plastic's desirable properties and takes less then 10th of the time to biodegrade.  Chitin is one of the most abundant organic materials in the world, after cellulose, which gives woody plants their structure.  In addition to crustaceans, chitin is found in insects, fish scales, mollusks and fungi.
    Like plastic, chitin is a polymer, a molecular chain made from repeating units. The building block in chitin, N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, is a sugar related to glucose. Chitin and chitosan are antibacterial, nontoxic and used in cosmetics, wound dressings and pool-water treatments, among other things. 
    There is a few problems that will have to be overcome, but if they can find a way/ways to more easily harvest the derivatives needed for the manufacturing of this new (polymer) type material, it could have a very large impact on plastic based pollution.   As it is now some rather harsh chemicals are used to leach the component chemicals needed for manufacturing.  "The challenge is getting enough pure chitin and chitosan from the shells to make bio-based "plastic" in cost-effective ways. "There's no blueprint or operating manual for what we're doing," says John Keyes, CEO of Mari Signum, a start-up company based just outside of Richmond, Va., that is devising ways to make environmentally friendly chitin. But a flurry of advances in green chemistry is providing some guideposts."
    With a new method this will be a very promising step the right way.   

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/seafood-shells-chitin-plastic-food-waste?tgt=nr

 

   Lots of hope for this one!   

[space otter]

What the hey
at least humans are working on it..
because I was involved with edible fungi (agaricus bisporus)
for so long I still try to keep up with fungi news about different things...I havn't kept the journals
but found some info on line that helps to make me feel a bit better

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260780595_Biodegradation_of_polymers_by_Fungi_isolated_from_Plastic_garbage_and_assay_for_Optimum_Condition_for_growth
Biodegradation of polymers by Fungi isolated from Plastic garbage and assay for Optimum Condition for growth
Article (PDF Available) · May 2013 with 5,626 Reads

Abstract
Widespread studies on the biodegradation of plastics have been carried out in order to overcome the environmental problems associated with synthetic plastic waste. Recent work has included studies of the distribution of synthetic polymer-degrading fungi in the environment, the isolation of new strain Myceliophthora sp.for biodegradation, the discovery of degradation enzyme Laccase which responsible of biodegradation of plastic, and the optimum pH is 5.0 and temperature is 30 C for local isolateas well as testing its ability to degrade polyethylene strips under Scaning Electron Microscope in Laboratory condition
https://www.trueactivist.com/newly-discovered-fungus-could-rid-landfills-of-plastics/
Newly Discovered Fungus Could Rid Landfills Of Plastics!

by: Amanda Froelich Posted on May 25, 2015


excerpt

Currently, Americans discard about 33.6 million tons of plastic each year. Only 6.5 percent of it is recycled and 7.7 percent is combusted in waste-to-energy facilities, which create electricity or heat from garbage. In result, there is a massive amount of non-biodegradable materials being tossed into landfills with a wait of about 1,000 years or so before they decompose. What's worse, many of these materials may leak pollutants into the soil and water.

But thanks to a group of Yale students who discovered a new type of fungus in the Ecuadorian rainforest, a semi-solution may soon be available to help speed up the decomposition process of plastics sitting in landfills.

This Plastic-Eating Mushroom Cleans Up Non-Biodegradable Wastehttps://www.greenmatters.com/news/2017/10/04/EoNOt/plastic-mushroom-waste
The researchers are currently seeking funding to create a large-scale plastic degradation system with the fungi. Fast Company reports that other trash-abating organisms have been discovered. Wax worms, which evolved to eat wax in beehives, can eat polyethylene trash like plastic bags, and the enzymes the worms use to do so could potentially be engineered and scaled up to clean up waste.

Using Fungi To Clean Up Pollutants | Permaculture magazine
https://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/using-fungi-clean-pollutantsFeb 5, 2015 - Mycore mediation - using fungi to clean pollutants - is being used to clean waterways, soil and in some areas, even radioactive waste. Here a ... We don't have to use pesticides to get rid of weeds, we use multiple approaches ...

before I left the mush biz (mushroom business)  there was much excitement about certain fungi cleaning up radioactive waste

https://bodyecology.com/articles/microbes_clean_toxic_waste-php/

https://fungially.com/mycoremediation-using-mushrooms-clean-toxic-waste-environment/

https://theecologist.org/2014/may/22/fungi-clean-contaminated-soils