Mushrooms are capable of so many things.
They can be an ingredient in delicious meals.
Prompt feelings of euphoria and help keep ourselves healthy.
But did you know that they could also eat plastic?
I know it sounds impossible, but recent studies show that certain types
of mushrooms can degrade plastic and convert it into organic matter.
And this research has been applied to art installations
like this plastomatch, a.k.a.
a plastic stomach, that's actively munching away at plastic.
It's so cool.
But I want to know, can this solution apply to all fungi and all plastics?
Can I grow fungi at home to eat my waste?
And can this solution be scaled up to clean up our landfills?
Let's find out on this episode of 'Can It Save the Planet?' I'm
talking to a fungi materials expert and sculpture artist
to learn more about how mushrooms can be used as a resource and ultimately find out
if mushrooms can save the planet presented by astral tequila.
Since
large scale plastic production started in the early fifties,
we have generated more than 8 billion metric tons of plastic.
Sadly, estimates suggest
that about 11 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year.
And this is expected to nearly triple by 2040.
And because plastic can take centuries to decompose like this bottle
which can take up to 450 years to break down
scientists are looking into new ways to get rid of plastic polluting the earth.
One solution is mushrooms.
Ecologists estimate
there are somewhere between 2.2 and 3.8 million species of fungi on Earth.
But there are over
100 types of fungi with documented plastic degrading capabilities.
According to a study from 2011 on plastic eating mushrooms,
some fungi species from the Amazon like the Pestalotiopsis microspora, P.
microspora for short, were found to digest plastic and turn it into organic matter.
The experiment focused on fungi decomposing synthetic polymer polyester,
the kind of plastic we see
in all sorts of things, including kitchen sponges, furniture and even clothing.
The study also demonstrated how certain strains of P.
microspora could degrade plastic in dry areas with no oxygen,
which is great because areas with little to no oxygen, like in a landfill,
make it nearly impossible for things to biodegrade properly.
There have also been studies that focus on using fungi to break down
more common plastics made out of polyethylene, PET for short.
So things like milk cartons, detergent bottles, toys and other household items.
There's actually a researcher in Austria who created a nursery using oyster
mushrooms to decompose plastic while still creating edible mushrooms.
It's kind of awesome that they can do all of that.
It'd be great if we can use them to clean up the ocean, which is littered
with plastic pollution, as we see in the Great Pacific garbage patch.
But research
on the scaling and impact of plastic eating fungi is still very limited.
So I need to talk to someone who's researched fungi.
Dr. Sonia Travaglini is a fungi materials expert
whose research focuses on developing and testing how mushrooms
can generate strong, versatile fibers simply from eating waste.
But can all fungi eat plastic and can all plastic be digested by fungi?
Not all fungi can eat all plastic, but there is over
5 million species of fungi that they're found just so far.
The species of fungi that will eat low density polyethylene,
that's your milk bottles, and polyurethane, which is packaging.
Each species of mushrooms eats a little bit different,
but most of them use a hyphal network, or a network of their bodies,
to go out and find the food they like.
Then they'll secrete enzymes that will eat away
each piece of the material, nom it up, turn into their own body
made of carbon, and then either sit there until they just chill happily,
or they'll extend their hyphal network But Sonia says the speed
at which fungi can degrade plastic depends on many factors,
like the species of mushroom and the environment it's in.
Some mushrooms will degrade things in minutes Some will take months.
Typically, it's months for them to munch through the plastic.
And when it comes to scaling up the solution,
what are some of the obstacles we're going to face?
You really want to make sure that you have the right type of mushroom
eating the right type of waste you want to get rid of.
Mushrooms can easily take over.
The largest one is in Oregon and is the size of an entire forest
So you want to make sure that you pick the right mushroom
that just wants to eat your trash.
Are there any possibilities of those mushrooms?
Say they get tired of eating plastic and they're like,
We're going to go eat something else.
There are fungi
that do get into ants' brains, take over their body and control them.
But the likelihood of a plastic eating fungi doing that is very low.
After all,
there's fungi growing on us right now
and they're perfectly happy to where they are.
So plastic pollution is one thing mushrooms can fix,
but there's so much more they can do.
So far we've looked at packaging.
There are folks out there using it to replace leather.
There are folks out there
using it as a sustainable food source, and it can actually help pollution.
For example, if you had an oil spill, you can soak up that oil with straw
and then a mushroom will come along.
Eat the oil and the straw and make a perfectly lovely environment.
Wow. So mushrooms are amazing, so amazing that even artists
have started using them in their art.
Elizabeth Desmarais is a sculptress who's focused her art
around the natural environment.
One of them being the Plastomach.
Plastic match is a combination of plastic and stomach.
So this is a sculpture that is eating plastic by virtue of living fungi.
The plastics that are in this particular version of the plastomatch
are really all kinds of different consumer plastics.
There's an entire milk bottle there.
It runs through.
They left it down at world trade.
So, yes, I chopped it out of pollution, amount of trash.
This is based on studies about what white rot fungi can digest.
And white rot
fungi is interesting when it eats wood, the carbon chains in wood look a lot
like the carbon chains in plastic I would love to have one of these at home.
Unfortunately, it's a very lengthy process and it takes all the right conditions
for it to be successful.
It takes a long time for fungi to eat plastic,
and there are a lot of things you have to do.
The first thing that you have to do is you have to wash it really well.
You've got to make sure that there's no other molds
or anything else that could compete with the fungi.
If your plastic footprint was very, very small.
This could potentially be a solution.
It's also not recommended to harvest and consume the mushroom you grow.
If you are using plastic debris, you don't know what kinds of
contaminants are in it.
What kinds of dyes are in it what kinds of metals are in it.
So you cannot eat anything that's grown in a plastic match.
What about this plastic?
So this is vinyl. They shouldn't be able to eat it.
It's entirely possible that something's going on that I'm not entirely sure.
I'm just growing a new species.
Yeah.
So now that we've
seen plastic eating mushrooms at work, I think we have a conclusion.
Here's a recap of what we learned.
Number one, only
certain mushrooms have been found to eat certain kinds of plastic.
Number two, so far, this solution can only work in controlled
environments like a lab farm or an art installation.
And number three, plastic eating mushroom research is still very nascent
and needs more time before we start spraying large piles of trash
with fungi spores.
So can mushrooms save the planet?
Not yet, but maybe someday.
In theory, this would be a great solution,
but there's still a lot more research needed.
One area of concern is the potential for one of the plastic eating fungi P.
microspora to transfer its genes to other species and vice versa.
Too wordy, I know, but what that means is that a mushroom can consume genes
from bacteria and viruses and then transfer them to other species.
For example,
it can contract pathogens
like cholera and infect humans that come into contact with it.
There are also concerns surrounding the possibility that a trash
eating enzyme could spread out of control, digesting things other than plastic.
But don't worry, we're not going to become zombies from fungi.
Another obstacle is application and scaling.
There's no real answer as to how we scale the solution
to become commercially viable or if it'll even be sustainable enough
in the grand scheme of things.
Basically saying that
if we don't know how to profit from it, then why implement it?
Now, I don't want to take away from all the great things mushrooms can do.
World renowned mycologist Paul Stamets highlights a lot of these applications
in his TEDTalk, like cleaning up polluted soils, making
insecticides, and even creating a sustainable fuel source.
And experts like Sonia have looked into replacing packaging materials
with biodegradable material that's made for mushrooms
and can just go on to make even more mushrooms.
Then there's a possibility to grow your own oyster
mushrooms at home by feeding them plastic while creating edible mushrooms.
But as Elizabeth said, it's not the safest and more research is needed.
All of this is very exciting.
However, as I said,
more studies are needed to determine the overall long term safety of plastic
eating mushrooms, whether it's for eating or plastic waste management.
At the end of the day,
our current solution to eliminating our plastic waste
is reducing our consumption and production of plastics.
In the meantime, I'm going to keep growing my own edible mushrooms at home safely.
Of course,