So Spring Break came and went and I hope everyone had a fabulous vacation. As part of my break I went on a service trip and one of the places we visited was a recycling plant in New Orleans, Louisiana. The plant was associated with ARC, a organization that is working to recycle Mardi Gras beads in New Orleans specifically. We had about 65-70 students from two states meet up at the plant in New Orleans where we sorted out three tonnes of beads. The director of the facility took us on a tour of the facility where they house up to 100,000 lbs of beads from either Mardi Gras or St. Patrick's parades (not to mention all the other festivities that take place in New Orleans - they like to party). She also told us that each year there are 30 million tonnes of plastic beads that are imported from eastern countries that commonly go straight into landfills and garbage plants.
The problem with this is that plastic doesn't decompose in these landfills. Plastic will last in the environment for thousands and thousands of years and if it does break down, it's only into smaller and smaller pieces but because plastic is not biologically friendly it never goes away. However there is hope! There has been new development on the topic of plastic pollution. There have been researchers who have been working with mushrooms and the mycelium that mushrooms produce in the root system. This mycelium can act like a glue and will actually grow into a plastic replacement material. The fibrous material takes the shape of what ever container it is grown within and is 100% biodegradable so it's okay to just throw it in the back yard and forget about it.
If mushrooms can replace plastic, what effect could that have on the massive amounts of plastic in our landfills? I love the possibilities presented by this replacement. We could remove Styrofoam from the world!
Mushrooms are the new Plastic
~Brooke Welsh
This sounds awesome! Sounds like it was an interesting trip as well. Hopefully they continue to further develop this research about mushrooms replacing plastic. It's crazy how much plastics waste is accumulated just from Mardi Gras in New Orleans. If you think about all the other holidays where we carelessly throw things away (like wrapping paper at Christmas), the amount of waste being thrown out must be huge.
ReplyDeleteWow what a great opportunity this was! If we can get rid of the use of Styrofoam in the world, I couldn't get happier. So many people do not realize how much plastic they get temporarily to just throw it away and that it doesn't break down for thousands of years. This bad habit has gotten so out of hand as we can see with just the Mardi Gras beads. I am excited to see what mushrooms can provide in the future of eliminating plastics.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a pretty sweet idea, only if people can get past the initial thought of "im using mushrooms". But hey, I would definitely use mushroom plastic. It really pisses me off when I see plastic in the garbage can just because it is something that can easily be recycled but something that is so hard to decompose. Go shrooms!
ReplyDeleteMushrooms? That is a really cool idea. It could change pretty much everything. I know that in my daily life, plastic is everywhere. It's an unavoidable evil. I just wonder what would happen if this mushroom plastic was used in water or soda bottles. Those products can sit on shelves for months and still be considered sell-able and with the acidic nature of soda its questionable whether the mushrooms can stand it.
ReplyDeleteIt is really impressive what nature can create and how it can be used. However, as Sarah said I ponder that it could survive exposure to some chemicals. But still I think that we should rather stop using such useless things as bead necklace for one night, and stop drinking sodas from plastic bottles.
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