6 Ways MUSHROOMS Can SAVE the WORLD

Mycologist Paul Stamets lists 6 ways the mycelium fungus can help save the World: cleaning polluted soil, making insecticides, treating smallpox and even flu viruses.

1.   Cleaning Up Oil Spills: Stamets laid some mycelium on an oil spill as part of an experiment to compare it with other solutions. The fungi consumed the oil, broke the carbon hydrogen bonds and re-manufactured it into carbohydrates. Before long, insects were pulled into the pile, then fowls came to eat the bugs, the birds dropped vegetation seeds and a new biological system was on in route. “Our pile became an oasis of life,” Stamets said. “The other piles were dead, dark and stinky.”
2. Absorbing Farm Pollution: Encouraged by the oil test, Stamets then made burlap sacks loaded with garbage and mycelium and put them downstream of farms to channel overflow. “We’ve seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of coliforms,” he said, noting that in a few days the mushrooms had reduced the bacteria by 10,000 times. 
3. Fighting off Disease: Stamets presents a mushroom called agarikon. It lives just in old-development forests, is believed to be wiped out in Europe and is exceptionally uncommon in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. He attempted to test the fungus with the Department of Defense and found that three strains are exceptionally dynamic against pox viruses and three are profoundly dynamic against the season’s cold flu virus. “I then think that we can make the argument that we should save the old-growth forest as a matter of national defense,” Stamets said. 
4. Combating Insects: Termites, carpenter ants and different bugs can be a scourge to individual’s homes, and some fungus-based insecticides spray don't work in light of the fact that the animals know to evade the spores. So Stamets built up a mycelium that didn’t create spores and laid it down in his home. “The ants were attracted to the mycelium, because there’s no spores,” he said. “They gave it to the queen. One week later, I had no sawdust piles whatsoever.” Then, mushrooms grew out of the insect carcasses, which had spores and cautioned different ants to maintain a strategic distance from the house altogether. 
5. Re-Greening the Planet: One of Stamets’ innovations are the life box, which incorporates fungi spores that you add to soil, water and cardboard. That makes a rich environment to plant different seeds, similar to corns, beans, squash and onions for refugee populations. You can likewise utilize tree seeds to kick-off a new forest. “You end up growing — potentially — an old-growth forest from a cardboard box,” he says.
6. Creating A Sustainable Fuel Source: Perhaps the most remarkable guarantee of mycelium is the possibility to move us away from non-renewable energy source in a maintainable, earth-accommodating way. Rather than squandering vitality going straightforwardly from cellulose to ethanol, he utilizes mycelium as a go-between, enabling the fungus to normally convert over to cellulose into fungal sugars. “I think that we need to be ecologically intelligent about the generation of fuels,” Stamets said. “So, we build the carbon banks on the planet, renew the soils.”