Carbon Sequestration: So Mush-room to Capture and Store CO2.
Fig 1. Soil Carbon Sequestration
The idea of storing Carbon seems simple yet there hasn’t been a scalable technology on the open market. Current technologies require a net input of energy/power to store carbon or can only be utilized at point source emissions (think of exhaust stacks). Carbon Dioxide/Carbon constitutes about 0.04% of air which makes capturing Carbon from the air a futile attempt, as the amount of air you would need to “filter” would be astronomical.
“The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is currently at nearly 412 parts per million (ppm) and rising.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-handle-on-carbon-dioxide/
By taking a step back and thinking critically (re-thinking carbon) we began to better understand what constitutes “life” and how all life is Carbon! We started researching and looking for inspiration in nature and how “life” was able to “Find a way” to re-cycle Carbon. Understanding the carbon cycle we saw the best way to store carbon is by locking it into Cells or cellular organisms. Once we realize the best way to capture carbon as a solid matter, we figured the best solution to sequestering was with Fungi or Mushroom Mycelium. Investigating this further we can find new research being conducted on biological carbon sequestration which is the storage of carbon dioxide in vegetation such as grasslands or forests, as well as in soils and oceans. Plants and Trees are able to sequester carbon through photosynthesis and new studies are showing how mycelium networks are able to not only sequester carbon in the ground but help lock Carbon Dioxide into the soil as mycelium is able to grow deep into soil and form large networks.
“Carbon is sequestered in soil by plants through photosynthesis and can be stored as soil organic carbon.”
https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/what-carbon-sequestration
It is all fascinating the research that is coming out on mushroom mycelium and how they have solved many problems Earth faced over a billion years. Yet here we are trying to “un-due” what Fungi have achieved by making Earth habitable. Not only can mycelium break down material at the molecular level and reorganizing them into useful material that provide symbiotic relationship with life. Fungi were some of the first life forms on land, breaking down rocks for mineral nourishment and slowly turning them into soil. Fungi are awesome chemists as they’re able to synthesize material scientists today cannot, it was only in the last 100 years we discovered penicillin or were capable of synthesizing it. Going back to the Ordovician era, we can find mycorrhizae fungi forming symbiotic relationships with liverworts, the earliest plants. Fungi produced essential minerals for trees and plants, in turn terraforming the planet — changing the composition of the atmosphere and air we currently breath! This is all very cyclical and harmonious and makes for very interesting applications for Biotechnology. Having understood the Biological Carbon Cycle, it was only fitting to produce a Retail Mushroom Grow Kit to engage and educate consumers of the benefit of mushrooms. Not only do we address issues about food insecurity, we can decentralize carbon sequestration by burying the Grow Kits once we’ve completed our harvests. It becomes empowering to be a part of an initiative and “fighting back” against Climate Change, this was one of the reasons my brother and I decided to start Shroom Stop in the first place; to leave the Earth better for next generations. I have only scratched the surface of what mycelium are capable of achieving, they truly are captivating creatures. I believe Fungi are the “masters of creation” as they eat death, and in doing so, create new life.