In a world where the average person consumes more resources than could possibly be regenerated in their lifetime, it's no surprise to hear that our quickening resource consumption is resulting in a slow-motion collapse of the environment and all life on the planet.
However, researchers at a San Francisco Bay startup company have discovered a way to counteract this degradation.
MycoWorks, a company which creates products out of fungi, believes that the answer may lie in replacing just some of the many products we consume with this entirely sustainable and renewable source material.
"They can take our greatest resource, which is human waste, and turn that into something that's really valuable to us. They have the ability to give us everything that we want" ~Philip Ross, Chief technology officer at MycoWorks
The company currently has the ability to create material which is similar to animal skin, but
even sturdier than leather. They were able to create products which are more durable than deer skin
in only a matter of months, but what is perhaps most encouraging about the project is that the material only takes two weeks to create, whereas real leather takes about two years for animal to be ready, without considering the costs of feed and housing.
Comment: Partly due to monopolies on certain products, like cotton, wood and stone, and partly because society is so detached from it's past that we seem to have forgotten the uses of a wealth of things in the natural world. For example hemp can be used for
clothing and as a construction material as
hempcrete, stinging nettles can be used for
fabric and as a powerful
fertilizer.
It seems we're in the process of rediscovering the secrets of the natural world:
Comment: See also: Report says NASA preparing spacecraft to nuke dangerous asteroids