from Hacker News

Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018)

by karimford on 12/3/20, 8:03 AM with 355 comments

• by thrawn0r on 12/3/20, 12:01 PM

  What 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?

• by foxhop on 12/3/20, 1:24 PM

  I use fungi mycelium to convert woodchips into soil for food production, I document the process here:

  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.

• by rmason on 12/3/20, 9:31 AM

  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. 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.

• by Roritharr on 12/3/20, 9:08 AM

  Whenever 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.

• by asplake on 12/3/20, 8:24 AM

  Trivial point, but did they name the ST:Discovery Stamets character after the author of this article? (Mycelium network)

• by brewtide on 12/3/20, 12:09 PM

  Just 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

• by peter_d_sherman on 12/3/20, 11:22 AM

  A 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!

• by gus_massa on 12/3/20, 10:43 AM

  The 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.

• by ZeWaren on 12/3/20, 9:17 AM

  Mushroom 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.

• by aritmo on 12/3/20, 11:49 AM

  Bad title. It's not mushrooms but "some fungi". They cannot "eat" but can "decompose".

  "eat" and "digest" are functions relating to animals.

• by arijun on 12/3/20, 9:14 AM

  The 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.

• by evolve2k on 12/3/20, 1:35 PM

  Paul 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

• by noodles_nomore on 12/3/20, 10:35 AM

  Slightly 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?

• by dalbasal on 12/3/20, 12:53 PM

  Th 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.

• by quijoteuniv on 12/3/20, 9:15 AM

  There 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.

• by LeCow on 12/3/20, 10:11 AM

  I can eat plastic, petroleum, CO2 and mushrooms.

• by 8bitsrule on 12/4/20, 4:41 PM

  I'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?

• by special12345 on 12/3/20, 9:06 AM

  All CO2 will escape at some point. Where do you store the mushrooms so that they rot less quickly?

• by maga on 12/3/20, 9:25 AM

  If 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.

• by zeofig on 12/3/20, 11:08 PM

  That'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.

• by janvdberg on 12/3/20, 10:37 AM

  The 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-plasti...

• by fomine3 on 12/4/20, 7:22 AM

  I'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)

• by newyankee on 12/3/20, 9:08 AM

  What is described just sounds too good to be true ? Wonder what the bottlenecks are ?

• by aitchnyu on 12/3/20, 1:57 PM

  Can we recharge carbon to bare soil and make it erosion proof using mycelium, if it rains a lot?

• by rekabis on 12/4/20, 11:47 PM

  Wait… “Paul Stamets”? Where have I heard of that name before…

  …hol up… Star Trek Discovery‽

• by davesque on 12/3/20, 7:45 PM

  This made me think of Miyazaki's Nausicaa.

• by danschumann on 12/3/20, 11:06 PM

  What do we do with the mushrooms after that?

• by toxicFork on 12/3/20, 8:46 AM

  (2018)

• by known on 12/3/20, 1:15 PM

  May be this is the reason I am allergic to Mushrooms;

• by gameswithgo on 12/3/20, 12:33 PM

  in the evolutionary tree, humans descend from mushrooms. We are more related to them than plants.

• by 1_over_n on 12/3/20, 2:40 PM

  mushrooms are amazing

• by Fjolsvith on 12/3/20, 4:19 PM

  Global warming solved. Check.

  Next crisis please.