How Mushrooms That Eat Plastic Can Help Fight Pollution | Earth.Org

Solutions

The Untapped Potential of the Amazon’s Plastic-Eating Mushroom

by Trevor Greene

Americas

Sep 7th 20226 mins

Donate

Earth.Org is powered by over 150 contributing writers

Long before there were trees, the Earth was overrun by giant mushrooms. Fungi first showed up over a billion years ago as three-metre-tall fungus fingers that dominated the landscape, while plants have been around for a paltry 700 million years debuting as scruffy shrubs. A billion or so years on, the humble ‘shroom is an unlikely champion in the war against plastic waste thanks to the discovery of a plastic-eating mushroom.

The Marvellous Plastic-Eating Mushroom

In the 100 years since it was invented, plastic has gone from being a wondrous time-saving material to a modern-day scourge, clogging our landfills, killing marine life and swirling around our oceans in massive garbage gyres the size of countries. When Yale University students found Pestalotiopsis in the rainforests of Ecuador in 2011, they discovered the first fungus that not only has a voracious appetite for plastic but can thrive in oxygen-starved environments like landfills. They taste good too.

Austrian designer Katharina Unger teamed up with scientists from Holland’s Utrecht University to develop the Fungi Mutarium, which uses pods of agar gelatine that nourish the fungus with sugars and starch until UV-treated plastic is stuffed into the middle. It takes a few months for the fungus to fully digest the plastic, leaving a puffy, mushroom-like cup with a sweet taste and a liquorice smell. Scientists foresee households owning a smaller-scale version to recycle their plastic waste and community recycling centres with larger systems.

The root system of mushrooms, mycelia, is intricate and can extend for kilometres. The largest living thing on Earth is the mycelial network of a honey mushroom fungus in Oregon in the US that covers 8.8 square kilometres just inches below the forest floor and estimated to be around 2,400 years old. Every autumn, the ‘Humongous Fungus’ pops hundreds of clusters of beautiful honey-yellow mushrooms from the forest floor. Over 90% of plants are intertwined with mycelial networks that are intimately woven into their whole lifecycle. Symbiotic fungi can even link plants into an intricate network known as the “wood-wide web,” which shares water and nutrients. Plants in turn ‘feed’ carbohydrates to fungi.

Using Mushroom as a Plastic Alternative

In the 1967 smash hit The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s 21-year old college grad Benjamin is cornered at his graduation party by a well-meaning friend of his parents who offers advice on a future career with just one word: plastics. Ironically, nowadays, that word could well be mushrooms. In March 2021, British fashion designer Stella McCartney debuted a black ‘leather’ bustier top and trousers made with mycelium.  But McCartney isn’t the only designer making clothes from mushroom fibre. Big brands like Adidas, Lululemon and Hermés have announced that they will be debuting clothing lines made from mycelium, a more palatable leather alternative than the infamous ‘pleather’ derived from plastic.

Mushrooms are also being grown as alternative building materials in Seattle. The duo Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre are making mushroom material a multi-purpose, mainstream product. After earning degrees in mechanical engineering and product design in 2007, the pair came up with a new process for binding particles using mushrooms. That year, they founded a company called Evocative Design, and soon after the then-26-year olds brought out flip-flops that are 100% biodegradable. They followed with Greensulate, an organic, fire-resistant board made of water, flour, oyster mushroom spores and a mineral called Perlite. Bayer and McIntyre say the product will be as good as most insulation brands out there because it is as fire-resistant as commercial fibreglass insulation. The company calls its growth process ‘programmable biology.’ In a week to 10 days, miles of thin, super-grippy mushroom fibre are grown that can be moulded into nearly any shape. “The products literally grow themselves. In the dark. With little to no human contact,” says McIntyre. Evocative Design has even taken a new turn on meat substitutes by growing slabs of mycelium, which can be cut into bacon.

You might also like: Plastic Eating Bacteria: A Viable Solution to the Plastic Problem?

The Untapped Potentials of Mushrooms

Mushrooms can even replace nasty herbicides. Irish botanist Brian Murphy discovered in 2015 that growing little-known fungi called endophytes inside plants helps defend them against disease but doesn’t damage the plants. Instead of buying seeds coated in an insecticide containing neonicotinoids, which decimates bee colonies, farmers would buy seeds containing endophyte spores, which would then make their way inside the crop and bolster tolerance to drought,...