(CNN) -- When it comes to plastic pollution, our society has asked everyone -- scientists, environmentalists, and the government -- to clean up the mess we've made. Through recycling initiatives, plastic-bag bans and fees, and alternatives to plastics altogether, we still haven't come close to solving the problem ... perhaps until now. The solution might have been discovered with a fungus in a laboratory Petri dish. Pria Anand was a student in Yale University's class of 2010 whose passion for the environment made her want to make a difference. Anand wanted to find out if there was something in nature that could decompose plastic. She began experimenting with dozens of species of fungi from the Amazon, but she graduated before she could finish her work.
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Two Yale students find that a species of fungi can decompose polyurethane
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A professor says the potential to break down man-made materials could be endless
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One of the researchers cautions it's not "the cure-all to pollution"
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And a biochemist says, "It's a big leap to go from the test tube to the field"
One day, as he casually walked into the lab he says his eyes locked on the @placeholder containing his experiment:  the plastic was gone.