So, I just watched a very interesting video on YouTube, where a guy is talking about how he's working with this strain of fungus that had been discovered in the amazon that's very vigorous and spreads and reproduces rapidly. He's been slowly increasing the salinity of the culture medium and adding small amounts of plastic and less of the organic food mix, causing the fungus' environment to be more suited to the individual fungal cells that are mutating to digest plastic.
He mentions how he hopes to develop this strain of fungus to the point where different varieties of it could be released in the ocean to combat the massive plastic contamination, as well as possibly oil spills and other major pollutants. Another possible use would be to seed the bottom of landfills with the fungus to help bio-degradation proceed more rapidly.
While many people might worry about possible future issues with the fungus spreading into plastics that we don't wish it to consume, keep in mind how we still do a lot of home building with wood, even though wood eating fungus has been around for a very long time.
I think lifeforms that feed on plastic will inevitably evolve. Lignin for example in wood is a far more complex compound to decompose. So plastic should be easy :-)
Oh, it is. Like I said, he's adding plastic, and if you watch the video, the fungus is metabolizing it whenever it runs out of other nutrients :)