# They Eat Plastic

Almost anywhere harvestable energy exists there, you will find a mushroom.

Carbon bonds are the most plentiful source of stored energy for fungi. Plants are purpose-built to transfer streaming energy from the sun and lock it up in sugars. Over hundreds of millions of years, some of this stored energy has become coal and oil. Whatever format it takes, fungi will harvest carbon bonds. This includes plastics, and we all know where plastics come from: petroleum.

Peter McCoy taught a strain of oyster mushrooms to grow on used cigarette butts. He started by growing oyster mushrooms on standard carbon sources and then started adding small amounts of the very toxic and mostly plastic butts. Over time, he stripped away the normal carbon sources until all that was left were the butts as the sole carbon source. Fungi learn and remember.

If a carbon bond is present, no matter what format it takes, some fungus, somewhere, will figure out how to harvest its energy.

#alexandria

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