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Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018)
- asplake 6y agoTrivial point, but did they name the ST:Discovery Stamets character after the author of this article? (Mycelium network)
- headmelted 6y agoIndeed they did! A good explainer about this on his Wikipedia page.
- jonathanlydall 6y agoAs someone who enjoys ST:Discovery, also instantly noticed this, looked it up quick and it's mentioned on IMDB as well. TIL. Quite cool.
- rplnt 6y agoI was confused for a while, not the author of the article, but someone mentioned in the article.
- dgb23 6y agoYes, also the core idea of the network came from him. There are a couple of interesting podcast interviews with Stamets. Fascinating stuff. He truly and deeply cares about nature and mushrooms in particular, has done extensive research over the years and has found a wide variety of applicable solutions.
- toxicFork 6y ago(2018)
- special12345 6y agoAll CO2 will escape at some point. Where do you store the mushrooms so that they rot less quickly?
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoIn Goats?
- leoedin 6y agoPyrolysis of trees can produce charcoal (biochar) which is stable in soil for thousands of years (and potentially stable in other locations for much longer). I wonder if you could pyrolyse mushrooms to produce similar products.
- special12345 6y agoI have read about it, Charcoal is transported to the oceans, where it has a chance to get in the atmosphere again.
- Tepix 6y agoIf they produce soil as stated in the article it will take a very long time until it gets released back into the air.
- noselasd 6y agoAre you certain the CO2 is not used to build up other molecules that will not always be broken down back to CO2 again ?
- Roritharr 6y agoWhenever someone mentions something organically eating away at plastic this the idea that it decomposes faster than we are used to scares me. Imagine what would happen if the plastic insulation of our cables rotted away, plastic housings of powertools fail... Basically most of our modern world would melt away in front of our eyes.
- jaclaz 6y agoSort of "the Rust" in "A piece of wood" by Ray Bradbury, applied to plastics ...
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoWe would add a chemical into the mix that would protect the in-use plastic from the mushrooms. But them we would have to invent a new mushroom that would eat that new kind of plastic waste. Oh. It's a never ending cycle.
- visarga 6y agoSo if the current Mushroom OS has a plastic version > your bottle's, then the bottle melts away.
- leoedin 6y agoThis isn't really discussed enough. There's so much chemical energy in plastic that it really is just a matter of time (although evolution scale time could be thousands to millions of years...) until something evolves to break it down. Depending on the rate that happens, it might cause some real issues.
- Tepix 6y agoNature shows us that stuff needs to rot away. If it doesn't rot, it's not sustainable.
- michalhuman 6y agoIf there's enough stuff, nature will find a way to rot it :)
- newyankee 6y agoWhat is described just sounds too good to be true ? Wonder what the bottlenecks are ?
- Tepix 6y agoI think the main problem is that it's still a slow process and it will be hard to scale it up to the levels we need to get rid of our single use plastics.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y agoIdeally, we'd throw a sack of spores on a huge heap of plastic and few years later it would all be gone. Getting there will surely be a long process and require a whole lot of research.
- hutzlibu 6y agoIf that heap of plastic will be at least partially covered with soil or wood, then maybe. But without probably not. Also, if you have a fast plastic processing mushroom, that would mean all plastics in use would not be stable anymore.
- LeCow 6y agoI can eat plastic, petroleum, CO2 and mushrooms.
- arijun 6y agoThe article doesn't contain any more information about the topics in the title. Which is too bad, because I would be interested in hearing about the economics of these things and hearing from companies attempting them.
- quijoteuniv 6y agoThere is a general hope that science will save the world from the mess it is in. I think this have been part of the problem all the way trough the last century.
- nsoonhui 6y agoWhy?
- pm90 6y agoScience and engineering have actually helped us address ecological challenges in a way we could not have imagined. It’s science that allowed us to extract coal and stop depleting forests at incredible rates. Science that allowed us to extract oil and gas powering the economic growth and prosperity unprecedented at any other time in human history. Science gave us Renewables too... today, it’s mostly a question of whether we have the political will to commit to mobilize on a large scale to convert to clean energy and end the inevitable climate catastrophe. If we survive intact, science will give us even better tools to deal with the problems we face. There is so much we don’t know about our universe. We have barely scratched the surface of the earth, barely discovered what lies outside our immediate planetary neighborhood, barely understood the biochemistry of us even....
- barry-cotter 6y agoSince 1950 lifespan and healthspan have increased on every continent. In every continent bar Africa wealth per person has increased as has education level. Seems to be working well enough so far.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoDestruction of the earth has increased and even accelerated too. Forests, corals, and vertebrate populations have been decimated.
- collyw 6y agoOverpopulation seems to be a root of a lot of the problems.
- ZeWaren 6y agoMushroom can eat and decompose mostly everything. That's their role in the carbon based life ecosystems. I strongly suggest reading Paul Stamets' books. Mushrooms are fascinating.
- pilsetnieks 6y agoThe character in Star Trek Discovery was named after him, also works with mushrooms, in a way.
- maga 6y agoIf I understand this correctly, mushrooms can eat the carbohydrates in oil and oil products. I wonder what happens to metals mixed in the oil, do mushroom suck those in as well or somehow filter them and leave in the ground? Old oil well and refinery sites in the developing world are full of ponds with a mix of water and oil/oil products that often come as a result of cleaning processes. Over time, due to evaporation and dust, these turn into asphalt like hard substances. Mushrooms could be a low cost solution to removing those over time, the slow speed of growth won't that much of issue as with fresh oil spills.
- rmason 6y agoThe unanswered question is what will you do with the mushrooms after they've munched on petroleum or plastic? My guess is that you're not going to want them on your pizza cause they might just be toxic. Will we only be replacing one kind of waste with another? For plastics the answer is out there, biodegradable plastic made from corn. It has to overcome two problems: 1. It's slightly more expensive 2. If we want it to degrade rapidly we need to make an investment in plants to do it. Otherwise you're looking at 100 years versus 300+ years for regular plastic.
- _iyig 6y agoLast I checked (circa 2017), bioplastics like PLA had poor heat resistance. This made them unsuitable for certain applications like bushings or gasket seals. IIRC "heat resistant" varieties of PLA are rated up to 120 Celsius, which is good for many applications but not all e.g. automotive seals, washers, and bearings. Footnote: I was going to compare the properties of heat-resistant PLA to those of PTFE aka Teflon, since the latter is commonly used in heat-resistant applications, but after some Googling I've learned PTFE is not petroleum-based.
- baybal2 6y ago> The unanswered question is what will you do with the mushrooms after they've munched on petroleum or plastic? My guess is that you're not going to want them on your pizza cause they might just be toxic. Believe me or not, I ate that yeast grown on petroleum paraffin once. At the time of extreme food scarcity in Russia, we had people eating animal feed produced from yeast grown on paraffin. It's called paprin in Russian. So, knowing that most of petroleum hydrocarbons are toxic if ingested, the result may be more amendable than the source product.
- eru 6y agoAs an even simpler example, hydrocarbons can be burned to water and C2O. You can feed those to plants just like anything else. (But going that route would waste a lot of energy.)
- 6y ago
- noodles_nomore 6y agoSlightly offtopic but, one thing I've been thinking: If we can produce plastic that won't degrade for thousands of years, why not leverage this and make books from it?
- hutzlibu 6y agoWe do. But plastic is simply not as nice as paper in your hands. Thats why there is low demand for it. But for a archive it might make sense to do this approach in a bigger style.
- anonymou2 6y agoThere are some books like that already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melcher_Media#DuraBooks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melcher_Media#DuraBooks
- janvdberg 6y agoThe actual link (at the bottom of the article) which produces a 400 error because of a bad href is: https://www.wired.com/2014/12/mini-farm-produces-food-plastic-eating-mushrooms/ https://www.wired.com/2014/12/mini-farm-produces-food-plasti...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gus_massa 6y agoThe part about "eating" CO2 is a linkbait. The plants "eat" CO2, the mushroom eat plants and keep the carbon fixated for some time. Using the same accounting method elephants and whales also "eat" CO2.
- peter_d_sherman 6y agoA very interesting article, to be sure. It makes me wonder if there are any mushrooms that could survive on Mars... If not, then one poster suggested that the surface of Mars is rusted (oxidated). If that's so, then my question becomes something of the following: Is there a food chain (from rust/oxides, to simple bacteria that would eat that rust, to more complex bacteria (that would survive on those simpler bacteria), to spores, mushrooms, etc., such that that whole "food chain" could survive on the surface of Mars? Speculation: Maybe we'll find strange/weird "food chains" (for lack of a better term!) like that on Mars, and if they aren't directly on the surface (due to violent dust storms, too much radiation, or what-have-you), perhaps such "food chains" exist in caves, or perhaps deep underground, in caverns protected from Mars' harsh atmosphere... I would love to know the answer to this in the future!
- DeusExMachina 6y agoIt looks like bacteria that eat rust do exist: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101210-new-species-bacteria-metal-titanic-wreck-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101210-new-s...
- agumonkey 6y agoand the usual pun about rust being a kind of fungus too
- aritmo 6y agoBad title. It's not mushrooms but "some fungi". They cannot "eat" but can "decompose". "eat" and "digest" are functions relating to animals.
- vanderZwan 6y ago"Decompose" would imply they also break down toxic chemicals, which would be even better - do they actually do that?
- giantg2 6y agoThey do decompose hydrocarbons into carbohydrates, which they then "eat"(absorb).
- giantg2 6y agoDecompose wouldn't, by itself, be a completely a accurate word either since fungi does consume some of the decomposed matter. I think digest can be appropriate since they are breaking down the food for consumption. I believe the enzymes they use are called digestive enzymes, even though they excrete them and reabsorb it (some microorganisms do this too as they are animals and lack a true digestive tract).
- thrawn0r 6y agoWhat bugs me most is the use of long-living plastics in fast moving consumer goods. I have to buy 12g of plastics to get 80g of Prosciutto. From packaging to EOL its lifespan is max. 60 days, most of the time more like 20 days I suspect. Why does it need to be in a container that degrades in 300+ years?
- forgotmypw17 6y agovoted with your spend you ensured more plastic bits is now in your karma
- wolfi1 6y agounfortunately sometimes wax paper is proposed as an alternative but although the name suggests it to be ecologically it isn't. most, if not all, "wax papers" use paraffin instead of wax
- brewtide 6y agoJust recently watched a movie last week, 'Fantastic Fungi'. It covers some of this, as well as many other interesting (and beautiful) aspects about Mushrooms/Fungi. Highly, highly suggested. "Fantastic Fungi" (IMDB link below) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8258074/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8258074/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
- animal_spirits 6y agoGreat movie, I've also watched it last month. Its focused on Paul Stamets (the same scientist mentioned in the article)
- gameswithgo 6y agoin the evolutionary tree, humans descend from mushrooms. We are more related to them than plants.
- dalbasal 6y agoTh power of biology is vast and amazing. Biology gives us the existence proof for most of our big technological aspirations. Solar energy, energy storage, dealing with waste, "artificial" intelligence, nano bots.... obviously every medical problem. Biology is already doing all these things in clever, scalable ways. It's one of the great technology wildcards, long term. It's not surprising that something eats petroleum waste products. It's organic and energy rich.
- known 6y agoMay be this is the reason I am allergic to Mushrooms;
- foxhop 6y agoI use fungi mycelium to convert woodchips into soil for food production, I document the process here: https://youtu.be/u4w9ir45Ebw https://youtu.be/u4w9ir45Ebw 4 minute video, no capital investment, and no infra required. Truely an amazing and under appreciated lifeform just waiting to be utilized for planetary healing. I'm looking forward to continuing my research, please subscribe if this is of interest to you.
- wil421 6y agoI do a similar thing with leaves. There’s a place where I blow all my leaves in the fall and it’s become a long term composting pit.
- foxhop 6y agoKeep up the great work! That said leaf blowers are so loud (make sure everyone around has hearing protection) Have you considered using a rake to make piles on a tarp? The tarp is then dragged to your desired composting location and emptied. I learned this method from my elderly Korean neighbor when I was young and have used it over leaf blowing for the last 20 years.
- therealx 6y agoElectric leaf blowers are a lot quieter, as well.
- bdamm 6y agoI'm really enjoying the new generation of battery powered lawn tools. From chainsaws to leafblowers to lawnmowers, li-ion is taking over. I won't miss the mess and cheapo carbs and tricks like shipping products without a simple fuel filter.
- clairity 6y agoi can't wait either. gas leaf blowers are technically illegal in LA, but yardworkers still use them all over the place without concern. they're loud, but more gravely, emit noxious pollution. all the more, it's not much more work or time to sweep or rake whatever it is they're (more rigorously) blowing up into the air and our lungs.
- evolve2k 6y agoPaul Stamets received an Invention Ambassador (2014-2015) award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The character Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets on the CBS series Star Trek: Discovery was named after the real Stamets. The fictional version is an astromycologist and the chief engineer of the USS Discovery, and is credited with discovering a mycelial network that powers an advanced spore drive. Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Stamets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Stamets
- aitchnyu 6y agoCan we recharge carbon to bare soil and make it erosion proof using mycelium, if it rains a lot?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 1_over_n 6y agomushrooms are amazing
- Fjolsvith 6y agoGlobal warming solved. Check. Next crisis please.
- davesque 6y agoThis made me think of Miyazaki's Nausicaa.
- danschumann 6y agoWhat do we do with the mushrooms after that?
- cwkoss 6y agoprobably compost them, maybe use as feed
- zeofig 6y agoThat's cool, but nothing can "eat" CO2. Eating implies a gain of energy, but converting CO2 to whatever is going to be a loss of energy. Plants use CO2 to get carbon and store energy, but converting that CO2 still costs energy. Unless of course the fungi are performing nuclear fusion with the carbon and/or oxygen.
- fomine3 6y agoI'm in Japan here's plastic waste heaven, so I fear to see extreme hates for plastics for food here. Are these plastics really bad if they are correctly burned or recycled? (I expect recycle is limited so primary to be burned)
- 8bitsrule 6y agoI've seen a lot of such articles from the mushroom community lately. Is it possible that the mushrooms are somehow promoting themselves? Through human surrogates? How else do we explain Oregon? Meanwhile, the cacti are getting no articles. Who will speak for Lophophora?
- rekabis 6y agoWait… “Paul Stamets”? Where have I heard of that name before… …hol up… Star Trek Discovery‽
- dragonwriter 6y agoThe name of astromycologist character on ST:D is not a coincidence.