Now that the human race has been spewing out trash for a good long time, we need to figure out what to do with it. When it comes to diapers, the best recycling policy may be to chow down, with a little help from mushrooms.
The population of the world is hitting seven billion in the next year. If there's one thing that is absolutely clear about the human race, it's that we know how to breed. The result of all of that breeding doesn't know how to do much, but what it does know - eating, sleeping, squalling, and pooping - it knows how to do very well. The last item on the list, the pooping, has made a lot of parents turn in desperation to disposable diapers. A lot of them. Five billion diapers were tossed in the trash in Mexico alone last year.
Left to their own devices, diapers can stay in landfills for centuries. That's right - the kids can grow up, lead full lives, have children of their own, who also lead full lives, and both of them can die of old age before the diaper breaks down. They're made from cellulose - which is a tough sucker to rip apart for most things. But there are things that are adapted to breaking down cellulose. One such thing dines on fallen trees, eating into their trunks. That thing is the oyster mushroom.
Yes, you've eaten oyster mushrooms. No, you haven't eaten ones that were grown on diapers - although you may have eaten some that were grown on food waste like coffee grounds or unusable wheat.
Waste management expert Alethia Vázquez-Morillas, of the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico, has just started growing mushrooms on diapers - and yes, she has eaten them. The diapers in question were contaminated only with urine, and urine from a healthy person is sterile. For more heavy-duty stuff, the diapers would have to be steamed before they were turned over to the mushrooms for feasting. Although it's unlikely that anyone will be interested in buying poop mushrooms (Although let's revisit that idea when the population hits 8 or nine billion, shall we?), the breaking down of the diapers is what makes the idea exciting. A diaper's lifespan would shrink from centuries to only four months. Then they'd truly be disposable.
And those who were waiting for a shiitake mention? You're welcome.
Via The Economist.
Photograph via Shutterstock
