Microbes help to recycle the plastic waste by chewing them up thereby offering an environment friendly approach to solve this world wide menace. Phenolic resins are so durable and popular but very difficult to recycle since they cannot be melted. An experimental recycling process which uses heat and chemicals has been found to be very expensive. Moreover it produces of harmful by-products. Adam Fusse and his research team members at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse fed phenolic resin chips to five types of white rot fungus, which are commonly found on rotting tree stumps. These manufacture an array of enzymes capable for breaking down the hard lignin in wood. Lignin and phenolic resins are similar in structure, both being made up of ring like molecules joined together. Among the five types of fungi, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, a white species was converted into pink after a couple of days. This suggested the breakdown of resins into smaller pink chemical components of the polymer. The result was confirmed by feeding the fungus on phenolic resin containing a heavier carbon isotope. After a few days, electron microscopic observations revealed that the resins were pitted with craters after being semi-digested or incorporated by the fungus. This suggests the possibility of recycling the phenolic resins in an ecofriendly manner, if a method could be developed to recover and re-use them.