Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the research report entitled State of the World’s Fungi 2018, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for its policies of the findings of that research that waste plastic broken down by fungi may be used to create sustainable building materials.

Defra is strongly committed to reducing the environmental harm caused by plastics. While we have not made a formal assessment of this particular piece of research, the Government has put together a package of over £100 million for research and innovation to tackle the issues that arise from waste plastics.