Mushrooms are fantastic organisms that have a multitude of reasons, from acting as a plant-based alternative to meat to helping degrade plastics to being manufacturing bricks for a more sustainable building material. Mushrooms grow roots called mycelium that have the ability to cleans pollutants and have been used to create mushroom bricks. Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus made of a mass of branching hyphae.

The mycelium is a natural filter and can absorb pollutants form soil and water. Hence mycelium can be extracted form mushrooms and placed in water bodies such as lakes where there is too many algae where it will catch the bacteria and break it down which is a both cheap and environmentally friendly method of filtering water and could help prevent hypoxia or oceanic dead zones from occurring due to the overgrowth of algae.

Since the mycelium can also absorb pollution from the soil, they are an important part of the ecosystem and can be utilized in micro forestry as they live off the bacteria that may be harmful to other plants. They even stimulate the roots of other plants to grow deeper in the soil which enables them to obtain more nutrients, thereby making the plants more healthy. Tomato’s that have been grown alongside mushrooms containing high mycelia content have been observed to grow bigger as well as yield a higher produce.

The mycelium can break down hydrocarbons, which naturally occur in oil so there is a possibility that they can be used to clear up oil spills. Research is also being conducted upon the use of mycelium to clear nuclear waste. Bioluminescent mushrooms live off phosphorous, therefore research progressing upon whether they can be grown in areas of landmines or areas that have been contaminated by leftover ammunition to make these land spaces safe and usable again.  

In 2012 a rare species of mushroom was found in the Amazon rain forest called Pestalotiopsis Microspora that has the ability to break down polyurethane which is a main component of plastics.  This discovery led to the invention of the Fungi Mutarium which is made of agar pods that are fed with plastic waste then the mushrooms are added as well as starch and sugar off which the mushrooms feed on. It takes a few months for the plastic to fully break down.

References

http://www.livinstudio.com/fungi-mutarium/

https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/how-are-mushrooms-more-similar-to-humans-than-plants.html

https://www.dezeen.com/2018/09/25/state-of-the-worlds-fungi-report-mushrooms-eat-plastic-kew-gardens/#:~:text=Fungi%20can%20be%20used%20to,from%20Kew%20Gardens%20in%20London.&text=Aspergillus%20tubingensis%20can%20grow%20on,chemical%20bonds%20between%20plastic%20molecules.

https://leapsmag.com/plastic-eating-mushrooms-let-you-have-your-trash-and-eat-it-too/

https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2019/03/05/mushrooms-clean-up-toxic-mess-including-plastic-why-arent-they-used-more/

https://crclr.org/article/2017-05-01-6-ways-mushrooms-can-help-save-the-planet#:~:text=Mushrooms%20can%20be%20used%20in,that%20makes%20other%20plants%20sick.&text=Additionally%20the%20mycelia%20can%20help,further%20down%20in%20the%20soil. 

https://interestingengineering.com/future-construction-mushroom-buildings#:~:text=An%20architectural%20team%20known%20as,alternate%20uses%20for%20mushroom%20mycelium.