Mana Mushrooms

Although Mana Mushrooms had nothing to do with this project, I found it an interesting example of a potential industrial partner who had demonstrated interest in the greening of their impact.

Attempts to contact the company with even non-committal project discussions proved unfruitful. The goal in this context would be to establish an industrial ecology making use of the mill waste paper sludge for mushroom cultivation, provided appropriate safety measures.

Erving_Paper_Mills_Increases_Recovery_of_Office_Paper

Quantitative analysis of waste streams. The primary interest of this article for Mana Mushrooms is prospective industrial ecologies: “How can we manage waste streams to add value?” Specifically, given that a high percentage of wastes is paper products and that many mushroom species serve the ecosystemic niche of primary decomposers, mushrooms can be used to process this waste, reduce the burden on landfills significantly, and create downstream value added byproducts such as compost, in the form of SMS or spent mushroom substrate, essentially creating soil.

UNEP_Solid_Waste_Management_Study