May 9, 2008
San Francisco, CA
Oil as Food
There’s a new and incredibly simple way to get rid of spilled oil like the sixty thousand gallons which leaked into the bay after a ship accident last month. Feed it to mushrooms.
Lisa Gautier with the Bay Area ecological public charity Matter of Trust says that when the oil spill happened, she was ready. “We said would you like to use our hair mats? And they said yes.” Gautier already had the hair mats for another study showing how hair soaks up oil. She and a small army of volunteers deserve a lot of credit for helping clean up Bay Area beaches with the hair mats, but now Gautier is taking it one step further. She’s showing off a natural way to get rid of spilled oil, instead of burning it, by letting oyster mushroom spawn lunch on it. At the Presidio in San Francisco, where the oily hair mats are being devoured, scientist Ken Litchfield with Merritt College says the best way to understand the process is to, “think of the mushrooms like an alien blob. It grows tentacles just like the ‘Thing’ does. So this big blob just goes to town on all those hair mats and the oil gets broken down.” The idea is a good one that Gautier hopes takes off to make oil disposal cheaper, and a lot better for the environment. “I think the San Francisco Bay Area is going to revolutionize oil spill clean- up. I think this is the kind of thing people can grab onto and say power to the people.” If you’re interested in learning more about the study click here: http://www.matteroftrust.org/ |
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