Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Mushrooms as the New Plastic

 

Every now and then, somebody comes along with a stunningly practical and ingenious idea that deserves to be noticed. If you walk nearly anything along the seaside today you will stumble upon some kind of plastic refuse washing up. And that's only what you can see. There's tons and tons of floating unseen, a permanent reminder of  extremely pervasive pollution. The problem is growing worse every year and nobody seems interested in putting a stop or reversing this problem.

 

When you are long gone, that cola bottle you drank from yesterday- which ended up in the trash this morning- will still be here and then add a few thousand years. Then multiply that by every household and again multiply by a year and you can see that we are in deep trouble. This kind of  thinking is really bringing our home planet to its knees.

 

There are people who are trying to come up with solutions. Here is a short lecture from TED- a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. The speaker is Eben Bayer. Eben Bayer is co-inventor of MycoBond, an organic (really -- it's based on mycelium, a living, growing organism) adhesive that turns agriwaste into a foam-like material for packaging and insulation.

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/eben_bayer_are_mushrooms_the_new_plastic.html

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