PLASTIC POLLUTION
FUNGI
MA University Project
The 79th Organ is a speculative project set in the year 2110, where a synthetic organ made from bioengineered fungi filters and breaks down microplastics from the body. Marketed as a life-saving innovation, it questions whether this is genuine progress—or a band-aid solution distracting us from the root cause of pollution and corporate accountability.
Brief
A Message From Our Future Selves
5 Time Travellers return, each carrying an artefact, collected from our future world.
They put on an exhibition and invite visitors to view their artefacts. In doing so they share their stories of the society we become – urgent messages from our future selves. Are they messages of hope, or warnings to heed? The artefacts provide the visitors with glimpses into a planet they are yet to experience. Clues to the possible consequences of our present choices (MoMA, n.d.).
They provoke questions amongst the visitors – why did we arrive at this future place? is it a future we want? and, how do we get there? or, how do we avoid it?
You are the Time Travellers. What artefacts do you bring back? Design them.
Plastic was hailed as a miracle material in the 1950s—cheap, lightweight, and indestructible. However, now in the year 2110, it has become a global crisis, polluting land, oceans, and even embedding itself in Earth's fossil record. Despite bans on single-use plastics, microplastics have leached so far into the food chain that contamination is completely unavoidable. They have contaminated our bodies and are found in our lungs, blood, brain, and even in the placenta of our unborn children.
The health consequences are dire, causing birth defects, fertility issues, cancer, and immune system shutdown. For years, governments ignored the issue, pretending it was only a problem for the Global South and the marginalised—not for the policymakers in high-rise offices. But now, as their own children show signs of contamination, they suddenly find it imperative to take action.
Yet, capitalism profits from crises, with plastic-related illnesses fuelling a booming medical industry.
The organ extracts microplastics from your bloodstream and channels them through a specialised filter lined with fungal mycelium. The mycelium then releases enzymes that break down the plastics through bioremediation—the ability of microorganisms to safely digest organic and inorganic contaminants. A living, breathing detox system.
What seems like a pollution-proof solution to the plastic crisis leaves a lot to be critical about. Is this just a cover-up by big plastic corporations to shift the responsibility away from them, or a band-aid solution distracting us from the root cause of plastic pollution?
Presenting the clear factory model, the organ used by a waste picker and the pink customised organ used by a young girl.