For the last one hundred years in North America we’ve been building low density energy inefficient housing and now we need to deal with the economic and environmental harm from this approach. In Cleveland they are using mushrooms to deal with housing that is no longer habitable while also cleaning the local environment. Cleveland has a lot of homes left to the elements which are leaking dangerous chemicals into the soil, to address this there’s a company that takes the shreds of a building and converts into a great spot for mycelium to grow. It’s a very novel use of fungi and I’m sure we’ll see more fungi being used to address climate change at a local and even global level.
While digesting entire houses may seem like a mighty task for the humble mushroom, some species’ ability to devour waste and eradicate pollutants – among other characteristics – means they present an oversized opportunity to extract harmful toxins from both our built and natural environments. Along the way they may help to address a spectrum of additional ecological concerns. This is the emerging field of mycoremediation, which researchers assert could also create a “circular bioeconomy” in which less waste and contaminants are produced in the first place.
Its applications are abundant. In Delhi, India, the hope is that fungi will help to clean the infamously polluted air. In New Zealand, mushrooms have been used to filter oil from a canal. Operating across Europe, the LIFE MySOIL project has leveraged mycoremediation to reduce Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons in soil by 90% spanning three pilot sites. The list goes on.
Thanks to Mike!
