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About the title, what is the difference between plastic eating mushrooms, and plastic-eating mushrooms?

The hyphen makes it unambiguous that "plastic-eating" modifies "mushrooms". Without the hyphen it could refer to some hypothetical type of plastic that eats mushrooms. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_modifier

I think it was pretty clear from context which was meant.

It's the difference between a plastic that eats mushrooms and a mushroom that eats plastic.

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