The humble fungi could hold the key to eradicating much of the world's waste as it has the ability to both replace and decompose plastics, a Queensland scientist says.

Mycologist Dr Sandra Tuszynska hopes the material could one day replace plastics, bricks and even metals.

She said the mycelium — the white, furry, web-like growth off a fungus — was a tough, water repellent and fire retardant material.

A wood rotter growing as mycelium, a fluffy network of cells from which mushrooms develop. ( Supplied: Dr Sandra Tuszynska )

"I've grown a bowl from coffee grounds literally coming from the office … I just grabbed the grounds and put them in the fridge and then I inoculated them with oyster mushroom mycelium.

"They just colonised the grounds completely by vomiting their enzymes, they are spat out of the mushroom mycelium, digesting and colonising the grounds until the whole thing becomes all white and really sturdy and then you bake it."

Mycologist Dr Sandra Tuszynska has grown a bowl from coffee grounds and oyster mushroom mycelium. ( Supplied: Dr Sandra Tuszynska )

Dr Tuszynska, works as the environmental projects officer at 'Woodfordia', the home of the Woodford Folk Festival.

She said the vomiting or spitting out of enzymes occurred when the mycelium decomposed or digested wood or other matter.

"Once moisture gets into the drop down wood, other organic matter, dead insects or animals, the fungi do their work by penetrating through the matter and decompose it by vomiting up enzymes onto the substance it's decomposing."

Potential solution to clear up landfill?

A split gill fungi, growing in the Treehouse at Woodfordia, is found worldwide and can decompose plastic. ( Supplied: Dr Sandra Tuszynska )

Dr Tuszynska said international research had found that fungi could decompose plastics.

The annual production of plastic has risen sharply from 1.7 million tonnes in 1954 to 311 million in 2014 and less than 5 per cent of the world's plastics were recycled.

"This (Amazonian species) can also grow anaerobically, that means it literally has the potential to clean up landfill.

"Everything that we make in today's world that is plastic-based does come from wood originally.

"This is where the beauty of fungi comes in, because they can decompose wood they're able to, with some help from us, to potentially decompose a lot of the substances that we have made that are so difficult to actually decompose."

A plastic bottle, for instance, would take at least 450 years to decompose and some may even take 1,000 years.

Dr Tuszynska said value of fungi in ecological systems should not be underestimated.

"For example when you're in a forest you will have trees drop branches and leaves, and something has to decompose that in order for it to be recycled back into nutrients otherwise it would choke out the whole forest.

"It would just be a disaster really."

'The internet of the woods'

Leathery Goblet decomposes dead wood in rainforests of east coast of Australia. ( Supplied: Dr Sandra Tuszynska )

While we carry on with our lives aboveground, below the surface fungi spread as a tangible web, communicating via a network which scientists refer to as the Wood Wide Web.

Dr Tuszynska explained that connectivity protected trees from disease.

"Some (scientists) even say that they (the fungi) 'log on', which is quite fascinating.

"They wrap around roots of trees, they're symbiotic — so you don't really see them unless they have mushrooms — but underground per person there's four tonnes of mycelium which is the stuff that actually makes mushrooms grow.

"It's just this thick mass layer of connection between different trees and food gets passed from photosynthesis between trees, but also from one end of the forest you can have communication being passed through the fungal network to the other end."

If you think that this sprawling underground network sounds familiar, you're right.

"They're basically like the internet system, in fact I think the internet system was based on the same prototype so it is definitely the internet of the woods."

Turkey Tail in the Bunya Mountains National Park has been shown to degrade dioxin, petrochemicals and other man-made pollutants. ( Supplied: Dr Sandra Tuszynska )

"If there's stress, root fungi can pass signals on from one tree to a few trees down, 'look guys we're getting attacked by something so let's start pumping out those defence mechanisms so we don't get into trouble'."

And that's how the forest survives. As a united, "super-organism", not as individual plants.

She said some mycologists believed that fungi communicated by responding and sensing the presence of animals above ground and transmitting messages to trees regarding needs for food and photosynthesis.

"Just the greatness of the world with all the creatures doing their little bit amazes me.

"Fungi just do this bit that really excites me like recycling and decomposing wood and all kinds of other things. I just find that very, very exciting."

Dr Tuszynska will also be at this year's Woodford Folk Festival north of Brisbane.