20/06/2022
When the word βfungiβ comes to mind, what do you think of? Spoiled food? Athletes foot? Parasitic fungi that attack plants? Fungi is commonly associated with unpleasant things and the thought of fungi lacks a significant amount of potency in comparison to what fungi really is and what it can do for us, the environment, and future generations. By nature, fungi are altruistic organisms that allow, facilitate, and recycle all life on earth. Without fungi, the earth would be a wasteland and the essence of life would diminish.
So, what more can fungi do? How can fungi save the world?
Mycorestoration is the use of fungi to repair or restore the weakend immune systems of environments while creating practical & sustainable techniques that allow us to live more symbiotically with our environment.
Fungi have been proven to be cheap, effective, and environmentally sound. By utilizing the methods and techniques that mycorestoration produces - we can rejuvenate, enrich, and nourish our ecosystems while drastically cutting down our carbon footprint or GHG emissions and more.
Mycorestoration acts as an umbrella over mycoforestry, mycoremediation, mycofiltration, and mycopesticides each with their own distinct functions and benefits.
Mycoforestry: An ecological science/type of permaculture that enriches and enhances the plant communities within a forest through the introduction of mycorrhizal and saprotrophic fungi, this is especially useful for agroforestry techniques when intentionally introducing tree or shrub crops within forests.
Mycoremediation: A form of bioremediation that encompasses methods utilizing fungi to help purify ecosystems of pollutants, toxins, and other material that is hard to recycle, keeping our ecosystems healthy and sustainable.
Mycofiltration: The use of mycelium as a membrane to filter out pathogens such as protozoa, bacteria, and viruses as well as filtering out pollutants, chemical toxins, and silt. Mycofiltration can be applied at many sites such as farms, suburban areas, urban areas, watersheds, factories, roads, and stressed, harmed, or malnourished habitats all of which would either reduce our impact on our surrounding ecosystems or help rejuvenate and enrich it.
Mycopesticides: The use of fungi to control pests. Pests like insects and nematodes to weeds and other fungi. This also has many applications as mycopesticides can be used for pest control not only in residential and commercial buildings but in agricultural crop fields or indoor urban farms. This will eliminate the need and usage of synthetic and/or destructive pesticides like round up which do a lot more harm than good compared to mycopesticides which not only fulfill the job in an organic way, but the mycelium is beneficial to the crop.
Mycomaterials: The concept of using fungi as material to create practical items anywhere from clothes, shoes, packaging material, bee houses, human houses, and even canoes! Fungal bricks from spent substrate produced by mushroom farms are fired and compressed into mushroom bricks. These mushroom bricks are fire resistant, great insulators, and have superb compressive strength. These bricks can be stacked and further processed with clay or plaster to create homes, buildings, and facilities
During the evolution of humankind, we have become the apex disease of our earth. Polluting our ecosystems, oceans, and atmospheres as well as deforesting our jungles and rainforests due to our indirect or direct actions for overall capitalization. With mycorestoration we can rejuvenate, enrich, and nourish our ecosystems, greatly reduce our carbon footprint or GHG emissions, and live more symbiotically and sustainably with our earth!
