“In the laboratory, Vaksmaa and her team observed that the breakdown of PE by P. album occurs at a rate of about 0.05 per cent per day.”
0.05 percent a day, in a lab, and only on polyethylene that sunlight has already softened. Plastic that sinks before it gets UV is off the menu. Humans make more than 400 billion kilograms of plastic a year and the North Pacific gyre alone holds 80 million kilograms. The fungus is not the cleanup. It’s a rounding error.