Letter: No surprise that microbes are eating plastic waste

From Sam Edge, Ringwood, Hampshire, UK

From

22 June, p 16

I was heartened to read of another organism that has taken to consuming one of our throwaway polymers. To be fair, given the high energy density of plastics, it isn’t surprising that microbes are evolving to feed on them.

I agree with Annika Vaksmaa about the dangers of introducing this fungi, Parengyodontium album, outside its existing ecology. In fact, it occurs to me that if we encourage plastic-eating microorganisms by selective breeding or gene editing, we might end up hoisted by our own petard. The non-biodegradability of plastics is one of the main reasons we use them, after all.