Mycoremediation Trends

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With over ten years of experience, the mycoremediation industry, which uses mushrooms for soil and water cleanup, continues to expand.

Practical sustainability explains much of the industry's growth. In brief, mycoremediation promotes cost effective soil and water recycling. It's possible, for example, to purchase a twenty dollar mushroom kit for back yard purposes.

Technical improvements within the mushroom cultivation industry also continue on a practical direction. The introduction of state of the art, climate controlled growing facilities, allows scientists to expand the universe of potential mushroom enzyme producing properties. In turn, scientific progress keeps pace with the wide range of today's and tomorrow's toxic and hazardous waste jobs.

Mycoremediation's commercial side also ties in nicely with an already established industry, providing both with additional growth paths.

According to a United States International Trade report covering the commercial mushroom industry, over the past decade, increased competition from the global market, especially with canned mushrooms, has slowed, or contributed to declines in domestic mushroom production.

Mycoremediation's use of fresh mushrooms expands the market for established large and small scale local growers. A supply side perspective shows the industry scales easily, with state of the art commercial mushroom farms capable of reaching the million square foot growing space mark.

While many mycoremediation test plots tend to fit on the smaller side of the scale, industry scalability suggests that the mycoremediation industry is capable of handling both small and large scale clean up operations.

Consumer education already emphasizes the inedibility of otherwise edible mushrooms used in many remediation projects, making it easier to incorporate that safety approach into larger commercial mushroom operations with both culinary and remediation customers.

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Mycoremediation Trends