Mushrooms: The Next Big Thing in Environmentally-Friendly Packaging and Construction?
5th March 2022
With all the frightening things that are happening in the world right now, we thought we would focus on something truly magical: Namely, fungi. Last summer, we wrote about the use of psilocybin to treat depression in The Growth of the Psychedelic Industry. While an effective treatment for something that causes so much pain to so many is awfully exciting, it turns out that mushrooms are good for a whole lot more. Aside from aiding mental health, those tasty little pizza toppers are being used to create environmentally safe packaging and construction products, consumer goods, and even cleaning up one of the biggest messes humans have ever made.
Now, we aren’t saying that we’ll be getting a shipment of MeUndies inside a portobello mushroom, but rather what can be done with mycelium, which is the root structure of mushrooms. It consists of a network of branching, interconnected fine threads which can be grown into any shape and has no size limit. The Armillaria ostoyae mycelial network in Oregon occupies around 2,400 acres or roughly 1,665 football fields and is the world’s largest known organism.