For the last 150 years we´ve been a planet dependent on fossil fuels. Oil, coal and gas are by far the most used energy sources for driving vehicles, producing electricity and to heat our homes.
The use of fossil fuels has led to greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in the average global temperature as well as an accelerating climate crisis. A lesser-known problem caused by using fossil fuels are the large volumes of polluted soil, sediment and water (ground-, lake- and seawater) as well as huge deposits of chemical waste that have accumulated during this period.
All fossil fuels we are taking out of the ground today originates from dead marine organisms and terrestrial plants that were deposited and buried over the last 300 million years. Hence the name “fossil”. Photosynthesizing algae that lived in ancient seas were upon death accumulated on the seafloor and buried, and slowly transformed into oil and gas. Flourishing Carboniferous forests were buried in widespread swamps and over geologic timescales turned into coal. All at the same time as dinosaurs first appeared and roamed the world.
In a couple of decades, we will run out of fossil fuels. So, what took hundreds of millions of years to make will take humans 200 years to consume. In the blink of an eye all fossil fuels will be exhausted.
When toxins linger in the environment permanent damage to ecosystems results for terrestrial and marine systems, as well as in drinking water and the very ground we build our houses on and grow our crops in.
These hydrocarbon-based pollutants need to be recycled back to the carbon cycle – back to nature. But currently, there are no truly sustainable methods to treat this problematic waste stream. It is either deposited and stored, awaiting development of new, green remediation technologies or burnt, which leads to further release of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.
At MycoMine we aim to solve these old environmental debts as well as prevent new ones by returning hydrocarbon-based pollution back to nature. We turn waste into life.
