{"id":101264,"date":"2020-01-23T00:17:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T08:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/a-mini-farm-that-produces-food-from-plastic-eating-mushrooms"},"modified":"2020-01-23T00:17:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T08:17:20","slug":"a-mini-farm-that-produces-food-from-plastic-eating-mushrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/a-mini-farm-that-produces-food-from-plastic-eating-mushrooms","title":{"rendered":"A Mini Farm That Produces Food From Plastic-Eating Mushrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-mini-farm-that-produces-food-from-plastic-eating-mushrooms.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Circa 2014<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>According to one recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0111913\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a>, there\u2019s at least 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. That\u2019s more than 250 tons. So what to do with mountains of plastic waste with nowhere to go? Katharina Unger thinks we should eat it.<\/p>\n<p>The Austrian designer partnered with Julia Kaisinger and Utrecht University to develop a system that cultivates edible plastic-digesting fungi. That\u2019s right, you can eat mushrooms that eat plastic. In 2012, researchers at Yale University discovered a variety of mushroom (Pestalotiopsis microspora) that is capable of breaking down polyurethane. It kicked off a craze of research exploring how various forms of fungi can degrade plastic without retaining the toxicity of the material. The findings got Unger thinking: What if we could turn an environmental problem (waste) into an environmental solution (food)?<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve read your last complimentary article this month. To read the full article, <a to=\"https:\/\/subscribe.wired.com\/subscribe\/splits\/wired\/WIR_Edit_Hardcoded?source=finalbarrier_text_failsafe\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribe.wired.com\/subscribe\/splits\/wired\/WIR_Edit_Hardcoded?source=finalbarrier_text_failsafe\">SUBSCRIBE NOW<\/a>. If you\u2019re already a subscriber, please <a to=\"\/account\/sign-in\/\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/account\/sign-in\/\">sign in<\/a> and and verify your subscription.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Circa 2014 According to one recent study, there\u2019s at least 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. That\u2019s more than 250 tons. So what to do with mountains of plastic waste with nowhere to go? Katharina Unger thinks we should eat it. The Austrian designer partnered with Julia Kaisinger and Utrecht University to develop [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}