Microorganisms are the “Swiss-army’ knives of the living world. For billions of years they have developed skills to cope in extreme and, to humans, poisonous environments. They have adapted to survive temperatures above the boiling point or feed on only metals or toxic compounds. At MycoMine we put these evolutionary innovations to good use and fine-tune them to speed up bioremediation processes and make the microbes more efficient.
Hydrocarbon-based pollutions like oil and plastic are an immediate threat to our environment and cause long-term disturbances in fragile ecosystems. At MycoMine we are creating a sustainable hydrocarbon-cleanup system based on mycoremediation where fungi decompose hydrocarbons, which are converted into non-toxic, fungal biomass – a totally natural and environmentally friendly end-product.
Lack of certain element and metals like Innovation-Critical Elements (ICE) and Rare Earth Elements (REE) are an immediate problem for the industry as it stops production. Paradoxically, many of these elements occur in abundance in mine- and electronic waste where they pose an environmental hazard due to leakage of toxic elements. Recycling of mine- and tech waste would minimize production costs for mining, and at the same time be environmentally friendly. We develop applications based on MycoMining for remediation and mining of elements and metals in water, soil and mine- tech waste.
