[Noisebridge-discuss] Growing mushrooms

Roger H domitron at yahoo.com
Fri Jul 29 02:17:30 UTC 2011


While this sort of talk is, no doubt, tongue and cheek, it is not logical if the goal is inexpensive, safe edible mushroom production with the most environmentally sound approach.  First off it is unknown the details of what will be sequestered by the mushrooms from the ink, heavy metals in the paper, etc.  It well could be that the mushrooms are safe to eat, but safety cannot be assured without study of what happens to any toxic components in the Digikey catalogs.  Also growing mushrooms on Digikey catalogs is not environmentally sound unless you need the catalogs.  That is because the catalogs require an inordinate amount of energy to create and transport for the purpose of mushroom production.  Furthermore in the case of a large-scale operation, one would have huge transport costs to collect all of the catalogs in sufficient numbers for the farm.  But let me not get ahead of myself here; even on an INDIVIDUAL scale, the environmentally sound
 thing to do would be to discontinue the catalogs by getting removed from Digikey's catalog sending list and then purchase a bale of straw at a local farm for about $8.  For that tiny cost, one could grow probably about a hundred pounds of mushrooms at a tiny fraction of the environmental impact incurred by having Digikey catalogs shipped all over the world.


I often hear of these kinds of ideas when it comes to mushrooms, as if they are magic and there is some great benefit to growing mushrooms off one particular novel waste product, let's say Digikey catalogs, rather than another less glamorous waste product, like say straw bales from farms (and, by the way, raw straw IS a waste product of farming, although collections in bales are sold for a tiny profit).  The truth is that in the end analysis, most novelty mushroom growing or remediation endeavors just don't make business sense.  For example, sure oyster mushrooms can break down oil waste, but can they do so as efficiently and inexpensively as the bacterial soups or chemicals that exist for that same purpose?  No, they cannot.  So while Paul Stamets likes the shock value of telling everyone that mushrooms can save the world, he usually dodges the harder question of "At what cost?"  And with business, that's a lot more important.


Roger



________________________________
From: miloh <froggytoad at gmail.com>
To: Rikke Rasmussen <rikke.c.rasmussen at gmail.com>
Cc: Tastebridge <tastebridge at lists.noisebridge.net>; "noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net" <noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net>; "bio at lists.noisebridge.net" <bio at lists.noisebridge.net>; Roger H <domitron at yahoo.com>; noisebridge-announce at lists.noisebridge.net
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Growing mushrooms





On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 9:06 AM, Rikke Rasmussen <rikke.c.rasmussen at gmail.com> wrote:

Food lovers, fungimanics, biohackers, hippies, happy people! 
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>It's finally time for the 2. installment of the oyster mushroom class: tonight, we'll be preparing the substrate, packing spawn bags and building a humidity chamber (and practicing real-life magic as we create space for all of this on the Tastebridge shelves!). Come learn what and how to feed your mushrooms, how to set up the perfect environment for them, and prepare for next week inoculation.
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>All of this wondrous excitement will take place TONIGHT! Wednesday July 20th, 8pm @Noisebridge, 2169 Mission Street in San Francisco.
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>Come join the fun!
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>/Rikke  
>


um, hey you guise:   http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/07/28/grow-mushrooms-on-old-digi-key-catalogs/ 
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