Master's in Design for Emergent Futures: Research, Design Experiments, & Interventions

MYCO-REMEDIATION EXPERIMENTS
Degrading
EXPERIMENTS TO DEGRADE PLA
& PU & PS with PESTALIOPSIS
MICROSPORA | MARCH 2022
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Next, Roberto Broce and I experimented
with Pestaliopsis Microspora (PM),
a fungus that was discovered in
the Amazon and has been proven
to bioremediate Polyurethane. We
prepared a agar and potato dextrose
medium, sterilized and poured it into a
petri dish with pieces of Polyurethane
(PU) foam, and added some PM spores.
We then repeated this but replaces the
PU foam with Polylactic Acid (PLA) and
Polystyrene (PS). Some samples (image
on next page) were contaminated but
the successful attempts showed that
the fungus was engulfing the PU foam
and PS foam however we would need
further lab tests to prove how much the
toxins were degraded.
PHOTO JULIA STEKETEE