Mushroom Recycling through Coding

Mushroom Recycling through Coding

 Team Number: 3 Team Member: Lennon Martinez lennonm024@gmail.com Zoey Blacketer idontcare2509@gmail.com 

Teacher(s): Sharee Lunsford lunsford@aps.edu Karen Glennon kglennon25@gmail.com 

Sponsor: Karen Glennon kglennon25@gmail.com Patty Meyer pmeyer2843@gmail.com Areas of Science: Biology Definition of the Problem: 

Since the 1960s, over 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced. 40% of this production has been for packaging that is used once and discarded. Landfills receive about 27 million tons of plastic every year in the United States alone. To solve the growing problem of plastic pollution researchers have begun to look for methods by which plastic can be decomposed. This led to the discovery of plastic eating mushrooms. Mushrooms can obtain their nutrition from metabolizing nonliving organic matter. They can send little seed-like [the spores are seed-like but not seeds.] “Fungi have a unique propensity for breaking down chemical pollutants (including oil and pesticides) by producing ENZYMES (Ali & Di, 2017).” It is important for us to clean trash because if we don’t it will send toxins into the air and we might kill our planet. Mushrooms can help this solution by breaking down chemical pollutants like plastic. As my project I have decided to focus on mushrooms because they can clean our world by breaking down compounds in plastic. It takes two weeks to several months to change trash into soil and create new nutrients. Through research it has been found that Pestalotiopsis (pes-ta-low-tee-op-sis) fungi can decompose plastic. The oyster mushroom is capable of decomposing plastic and it’s edible. In our first experiment we grew oyster mushrooms and found they grow inside a plastic container and the plastic started becoming foamy, so it was decomposing the plastic. This experiment was over three weeks, so if we did more weeks I think the plastic would have changed. “PETA turns garbage into food.” (Hildebrant, 2020) Microbial life can be used to eat plastic through supercharging bacteria and create mutation by using supercomputers to redesign enzymes. Problem Solution: It’s necessary to find the best combination of conditions for fungal growth to decompose pollutants. With coding a new program to be able to tell about these kinds of pollutants and to find more information through the recycling of mushrooms. Astoundingly, these mushrooms can survive on plastic alone. The fungi consume polyurethane and convert it into organic matter. This plastic-eating mushroom can also live without oxygen – making it the perfect candidate for cleaning up landfills. Our Progress: Currently we have done several experiments that have shown that mushrooms that are given moisture and contained in plastic will grow. We are working on proving that oyster mushrooms decompose plastic. Our second experiment will consist of growing oyster mushrooms in a liter bottle and also putting oyster mushrooms on wood to see if it decomposes the wood. Coding Plan: We will build a model where the mushrooms will decompose plastic and grow new crops with mushroom soil, we will manipulate the temperature and humidity and soil type so we can find the best place for our plastic decomposing EX: volcanic island. We'll be programming in Netlogo because it’s the best language for coding worlds. Expected Results: The oyster mushroom is capable of decomposing plastic and it’s edible. In our first experiment we grew oyster mushrooms and found they can grow inside a plastic container and the plastic started becoming foamy, so the Enzyme that the fungi produces dissolved the plastic. This experiment was over three weeks, so if we did more weeks I think the plastic would have changed. Pages of References: Works Cited Crosby, Willie. 

“Mycoremediation - Using Mushrooms To Clean up Toxic Waste in Our Environment.” Fungi Ally, Fungi Ally, 1 Nov. 2017, www.fungially.com/blogs/growing-mushrooms/mycoremediation-using-mushrooms-cleantoxic-waste-environment#:~:text=Fungi presses very powerful extracellular,and further breaks them down. Editor, Minitab Blog. “Trashmaniacs! Plotting against Waste (with Time Series, Pareto, and Pie Charts).” Minitab Blog, https://blog.minitab.com/en/statistics-and-quality-data-analysis/trashmaniacs-plotting-agai nst-waste-with-time-series-pareto-and-pie-charts. Fogarty, Kevin. “Supercomputers Find Bacterial 'off' Switch.” Dice Insights, Dice, 19 Dec. 2013, https://www.dice.com/career-advice/supercomputers-find-bacterial-off-switch. Gallagher, Katherine. “Plastic-Eating Mushrooms: Species, Benefits, Impact.” Treehugger, Treehugger, 14 Dec. 2022, https://www.treehugger.com/mushroom-that-eats-plastic-5121023#:~:text=The%20time% 20it%20takes%20for,two%20weeks%20to%20several%20months. Hildebrandt, Eleanor. “50 New Plastic-Eating Mushrooms Have Been Discovered in Past Two Years.” Leaps.org, Leaps.org, 25 Sept. 2020, https://leaps.org/plastic-eating-mushrooms-let-you-have-your-trash-and-eat-it-too/. McCarthy, Niall, and Felix Richter. “Infographic: Plastic Recycling Still Has a Long Way to Go.” Statista Infographics, 21 May 2019, https://www.statista.com/chart/18064/plastic-waste-in-the-us-municipal-solid-waste-dispos al/. “Plastic Eating Mushrooms.” Environmental Center, 4 Nov. 2021, https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/11/04/plastic-eating-mushrooms. Things about mushrooms: https://southmill.com