How Mushrooms Might Just Save the World

What if mushrooms can save the world? Maybe not the shiitakes you substitute for beef, but eating a more plant-based diet is an excellent way to take care of the planet! I’m talking about specialized fungi that can clean up pollution, digest plastic, and do more amazing things to clean up the mess that we humans make.

Of course, we should stop making these messes as much as we can. Fungi won’t save us if we don’t also contribute to taking care of the planet. So let’s get into it!

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Welcome back to Climate Solutions. A new series I’ve started where I cover the unsung heroes of fighting climate change and pollution. We all know about EVs and green energy, but I bet you never thought to enlist the help of mushrooms!

What is bioremediation?

Before we understand the fungal role in cleaning up the planet, let’s first talk about what bioremediation is.

According to Wikipedia, “Bioremediation broadly refers to any process in a biological system (typically bacteria, microalgae, fungi, and plants), living or dead, that is employed for removing environmental pollutants from air, water, soil, fuel gases, industrial effluents, etc., in natural or artificial settings. The natural ability of organisms to adsorb, accumulate, and degrade common and emerging pollutants has attracted the use of biological resources in the treatment of contaminated environments. In comparison to conventional physicochemical treatment methods, bioremediation may offer advantages as it aims to be sustainable, eco-friendly, cheap, and scalable.”

I bet you can even think of an example of this…trees! Trees sequester carbon that we put into the atmosphere. As we know, tree planting on its own won’t save the planet, but it sure does help. We still need to reduce emissions while also planting trees and protecting the trees that are already fully grown.

Bioremediation is literally using natural systems to clean up our messes. It’s an amazing alternative to using other chemicals that may just cause issues in other areas.

What is fungi?

Before we understand the connection of how we can use fungi to clean up the planet, we need to first understand what fungi are. I can’t wait to take a fungus class for my botany degree and be able to nerd out on this more in the future!

Well, fungus is not just the mushrooms you see popping up on the forest floor. That is just the fruiting body of the fungus. No, not a fruit. But it can be sort of synonymous with saying an apple on an apple tree. The apple tree is the living organism, and the apple is the fruiting body. For an apple tree, that is how the organism produces new life, the next generation. In fungi, the fruiting body is often just one way that it reproduces through spores, not seeds. The living organism underground is called the mycelium.

Fungi used to be considered a plant up until 1969! Only then was it reclassified as an entirely different kingdom of life. On the tree of life, you can see that fungi and humans are more closely related than either of us is to plants. Fungi are fascinating and have only really been studied in recent decades.

Which is why mycoremediation is the new up-and-coming thing to combat our pollution!

What makes fungi so good at cleaning up the planet is that they are heterotrophs. This means that they take in nutrition by absorbing dissolved organic matter…AKA eating. They use enzymes to break down their food. Unlike plants, which are autotrophs that get their energy from the sun. Fungi do not photosynthesize. But fungi do often rely on plants and connect to their roots via the mycorrhizal network. Fungi literally connect the entire forest together!

Not only this, but they help complete the circle of life because they are primary decomposers. Remember how I mentioned that they “eat”? This is what they eat oftentimes: dead organisms on the forest floor. It helps create compost/humus, a rich soil that can then support new life.

You can learn more about fungi on their Wikipedia page.

What is mycoremediation?

According to the Fungi Foundation, “Mycoremediation is a form of bioremediation: using enzymes produced by mushrooms, instead of bacteria, to break down pollutants and restore balance to the ecosystem.”

Plastic Pollution

While many fungus species can do this, our star player is Pleurotus, white rot fungi. This fungus, according to the Fungi Foundation, “fruits into the much-loved oyster mushroom. Researchers in Mexico City have found that introducing used diapers to pleurotus mycelium can, over 2 months, result in a 85% reduction in mass, compared to 5% in fungi-free control.

Edible oyster mushrooms - healthy and free from human diseases - grew from this waste. This is significant as used diapers make up 5-15% by weight of solid waste in the city. And even with the plastic of the diapers left on, there was still a reduction of 70% in mass (Espinosa Valdemar et al. 2011).”

So, what’s doing the decomposition? It’s the mycelium we mentioned before! This is the living part of the fungus that does all of its work underground.

That’s not all that pleurotus can do. According to the Fungi Foundation, “Pleurotus mycelium can also be trained to digest cigarette butts – of which 750,000 tons are thrown away every year. While unused cigarette butts break down over time, used ones are too saturated with toxins.

If that wasn’t enough to convince you of their superpowers, they also eat plastic. Katharina Unger, an Austrian designer, and the microbiology faculty at Utrecht University, NE, collaborated on a project that shows Pleurotus ostreatus breaking down plastic and turning it into human-grade food within days!”

This fungus is literally turning human waste and pollution into edible fruiting bodies that are totally safe for human consumption!

But how? It simply turns plastic back into organic material that allows the mycelium to grow and produce fruiting bodies with no evidence of microplastics!

Not only this, but there is a genus of fungi that are able to not only survive, but THRIVE in landfills. If you didn’t know, almost nothing breaks down in landfills. There isn’t enough oxygen to yield proper compost. So even your food waste doesn’t break down in a landfill and just creates harmful methane gas.

Until now!

According to the University of Colorado Boulder, “In 2011, researchers at Yale University tested the ability of several dozen fungi to digest the synthetic polymer polyester polyurethane (PUR), a type of plastic. They found that several members of the Pestalotiopsis genus of fungi were capable of degrading PUR and converting it into organic matter in both solid and liquid suspensions. Two members of this genus were able to survive solely off PUR in anaerobic (oxygen-free) and aerobic (oxygenated) environments.

Modern landfills are dry and oxygen-poor. This makes it impossible for anything to decompose properly, including organic material. However, Pestalotiopsis fungi are capable of plastic decomposition in anaerobic conditions, making them an ideal candidate for use in landfills.”

Heavy Metals

Did you think that was all? Fungi said otherwise!

According to the Fungi Foundation, “Metal pollution can also be remediated mycologically. Through the process of biosorption, Agaricus bisporus, Fomes fasciatus, Pleurotus platypus, and Calocybe indica can help clean up elements such as copper, zinc, iron, cadmium, and heavy metal wastes. In order to generate absorption of metallic pollutants, biosorbents are developed using mushroom mycelium or mushroom compost (dead biomass). This method is not only efficient and effective, but it’s also low-cost too.”

Oil Spills

While this research is still new and being studied, there is some evidence to suggest that fungi can be used to clean up oil spills, too.

According to the Fungi Foundation, “There’s even research showing how Antarctic Fungi species can assimilate and degrade compounds found in crude oil and refined petroleum. Yes, that’s right! Fungi can clean up oil spills and help restore the ecosystem’s balance.”

We can’t ignore plastic reduction

Unfortunately, many of the articles I read did not advocate for plastic reduction in the first place. The popular phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” is in that order for a reason!

It is incredible that we can use fungi to clean up water pollution, soil pollution, and plastic pollution, but that is not an excuse to continue to overconsume. I’m not even talking about you and me, but mainly companies.

I fear many companies will just use this as an excuse to not reduce up front. I can see it now: Coca-Cola never owning up to being the world’s largest polluter since they can now count on fungi to clean up their mess for them. These companies should still be recycling, opting for recycled materials, moving towards reusable materials, and cleaning up their mess instead of letting their products run rampant in our waterways.

So, reduce what you can. Every small action matters. Demand that wasteful companies do better and vote with your dollar. Don’t give these wasteful companies your money as much as you can help it.

At the end of the day, we can be glad for fungi to help us clean up the pollution we can’t control. Unfortunately, living on this planet is going to cause some amount of harm. Things like creating paper, disposing of human waste, and growing our food yield some pollution. For these necessary things, we can rely on fungi to help limit our environmental harm and make the world a cleaner place for us all.

If you liked this post, you should check out a few other unsung heroes of the world, like beavers and marshlands. These amazing parts of the ecosystem are also doing wonders to clean up pollution and restore balance to the earth.

Let’s keep learning, keep reducing our own waste, and keep fighting for a clean home.

Scientific discoveries and research are what led us to this post. I also urge you to keep fighting for scientific funding!

As always, remember that your small actions make a big difference in the long run :)

Emma