The Environmental Benefits of Mushrooms are, Well, Mushrooming
Consider the mushroom. This humble fungus plays many roles in our lives—a beloved (or detested) pizza topping, a plot device for a murder mystery, signs your shower curtain is too old—but rarely are they the star of the show, and usually we expect someone to be eating them. As it turns out, we may have been underestimating what mushrooms can be used for and how they might improve our lives and our world. The fossil record of mushrooms, which are more closely related to humans than they are to plants,1
goes back at least 715 million years.2 As of this writing, there are at least 14,000 known and named species of mushroom,3 only about 70-80 of which are poisonous to humans4— although mass extinction threatens mushrooms, just as it does so many other lifeforms.5 And, just as there is a massive diversity among mushrooms, so too are their potential benefits numerous.
Take, for example, Aspergillus tubingensis (sorry, there’s no easier name for that one). Around a decade ago, researchers in Pakistan happened across thriving colonies of Aspergillus tubingensis in, of all places, a garbage dump in Islamabad, the country’s capital.6 What compelled these friendly fungi to make their forever home amidst the refuse of a million-person city? An all-you-can-eat buffet of nutritious polyurethane, it turns out.7 Polyurethane, like other plastics, is notoriously difficult to dispose of, as it takes decades to degrade naturally. In Islamabad, however, the Aspergillus tubingensis colonies were making light work of that problem, breaking down polyurethane waste in a matter of weeks through a combination of specialized enzymes and ambitious mycelia, root-like threads that grow from mushrooms and other fungi.8 Polyurethane in particular has made its way into every corner of our world—upholstered furniture, car seats, sponges, spandex clothing, and foam insulation, just to name a few. Developing sustainable methods for clearing polyurethane waste has the potential to drastically reduce the environmental impact such products have on our communities.
If someone says that mushrooms have healing properties, you might expect them to be referring to, ahem, the more magical members of that family. But while psilocybin has shown some promise in treating individuals with depression,9 the medicinal history of mushrooms is both much older and much broader. At least 6,000 years ago, the pioneering Greek doctor Hippocrates, of the eponymous Oath, found that certain mushrooms appeared to have anti-inflammatory powers, while Native peoples of the Americas have likely been using mushrooms to heal wounds for just as long.10 Within the past few years, scientific studies have supported these intuitions, finding that some species of mushroom have the potential to speed healing, owing to their unique combination of enzymes and other compounds.11 Indeed, some of those same studies have found mushrooms to have antimicrobial properties and, as Hippocrates observed, measurable anti-inflammatory properties.12 Dating back to the 1970s, chemicals found in mushrooms and other fungi undergirded some of the earliest work on developing immunosuppressants, which in turn made the modern organ transplant process possible.13 More broadly, different species of mushroom, with different component chemicals and enzymes, have variously shown promise as immunosuppressants and immune system stimulants, which has provided cancer researchers with myriad research opportunities across a wide array of potential therapies and treatments.14
The most impressive thing about mushrooms may be their unique structure. While we mostly think of mushrooms in terms of the edible portions that grow out of the ground, that is just the most visible part of the organism. Beneath the surface, colonies of mushrooms and other fungi are connected via thin, rootlike structures called hyphae, which together comprise a network known as a mycelium,15 which means that mushrooms can be some of the biggest individual organisms on the planet.16 In the wild, mycelia usually connect mushrooms of the same species, but they can also intermingle if two different fungus species are growing near each other, producing hybrid spores in real time. In many such cases, fungi and plants form a symbiotic bond, with mycelia absorbing nutrients from plant roots while mycelia absorb excess water in the surrounding soil.17 In recent years, enterprising individuals and businesses have leveraged these structures to develop innovative products and solutions based on mycelia. Several companies have developed mushroom-based packaging, which serves to replace Styrofoam and other man-made polymers with biodegradable alternatives.18 Some of these options are so biodegradable, and compost so quickly, that they aren’t fit for long-haul shipping, and encourage more local supply chains.19
Similarly, at least one company is using mycelia to create alternatives to leather and other components of fashion and interior design.20 Given that the fashion industry, by most measures, is one of the world’s leading consumers of water and producers of carbon emissions,21 sustainable alternatives to resource-intensive materials such as these are needed now more than ever.
On the subject of resource-intensive “necessities” for modern life, mycelia also show promise in replacing animal products. Ecovative, a company based in Upstate New York, has developed and started to scale production on a meat alternative, called MyBacon, that utilizes mycelia, grown in precisely controlled environments in New York, Pennsylvania, Ontario, and the Netherlands.22 The resulting product is not only more nutritious than pork, it requires far less processing than other mainstream meat alternatives.23 As with fashion, the environmental impact of raising enough animals to feed Americans is enormous,24 and reducing the demand for factory farming is one of the more pressing issues facing the human environment right now.
So, the next time you see a package of mushrooms in your local produce section, take a moment to appreciate the wonders of their history and biology, and all of the good their relatives do for us. And always remember that sometimes, the solutions to our biggest problems are literally right under our feet. But that doesn’t mean you have to get them on your pizza
1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/02/27/fact-check-mushrooms-share-more-dnahumans-than-plants/11339411002/
2. https://www.gfz.de/en/press/news/details/mushrooms-are-older-than-we-thought
3. https://www.chhs.colostate.edu/fsi/food-articles/produce/mushrooms/
4. https://www.britannica.com/story/7-of-the-worlds-most-poisonous-mushrooms
5. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/fungi-vital-life-face-growing-risk-extinction-study-shows2025-03-27/
6. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/fungus-eats-polyurethane-Aspergillus-tubingensis-plastic
7. Id.
8. Id.
9. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/04/422606/psilocybin-rewires-brain-people-depression
10. https://www.bbcearth.com/news/the-surprising-world-of-mushrooms
11. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9946334/
12. Id.
13. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22217983/
14. https://www.mskcc.org/news/do-mushroom-supplements-boost-immunity-against-cancer
15. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/fungi-hidden-dimension
16. Id.; https://www.montrealsciencecentre.com/blog/the-two-largest-living-organisms-on-earth
17. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/fungi-hidden-dimension
18. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/10/how-mushrooms-and-microorganisms-could-transform-foodpackaging/
19. Id.
20. https://www.mycoworks.com/products
21 https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/sustainable-fashion/
22 https://www.timesunion.com/business/article/myforest-foods-receives-funds-fungi-operation-20240066.php
23 Id.
24 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/factory-farms-provide-abundant-food-but-environment-suffers