This week we're talking about fungus two ways. One that can survive exclusively on polyurethane and another that can replace Styrofoam.
Both polyurethane and styrofoam are not biodegradable, so without a solution, all the plastic bottles and old toys we throw out every year will be sitting in landfills for centuries.
Yes, you can recycle plastic, but that just means turning it into another product and recycling hasn't sufficiently slowed the production of new plastic.
According to a Yale study, globally we produced 245 million tons of plastic in 2006, compared to only 1.5 million tons in 1950.
One of the fungi we're looking at is called pestalotiopsis microspora. It was discovered by a group of Yale researchers on an expedition in Ecuador and can subsist on polyurethane alone in airless environments, like the bottom of a landfill.
The other comes from a couple of college friends who discovered that the sticky substance on the bottom of mushrooms called mycelium could be turned into a glue and when that glue is combined with corn husks and other food byproducts it takes on a form similar to Styrofoam. Their company, Ecovative wants used Styrofoam to become mulch, not waste.
A future with less plastic and more mulch, all thanks to fungus.
Author: Bill Weir, C. Michael Kim, David Miller, Justin Bare & Mark Monroy
EPS Styrofoam sheets are a great material choice when it comes to creating theatre props, because Styrofoam sheets can be cut into different shapes, thus making it easy to create many different types of props out of the same Styrofoam sheet.
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