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Dirty Diapers Used To Grow Mushrooms
Zothecula writes While their contents might be considered an environmental hazard by many, disposable diapers themselves pose a more significant problem for the environment. According to the EPA, the average baby will work their way through 8,000 of them before they end up in landfill where they'll take centuries to break down. In an effort to reduce the problem, scientists at Mexico's Autonomous Metropolitan University, Azcapotzalco (UAM-A), have turned used diapers to the task of growing mushrooms.
"....the average baby will work their way through 8,000 of them before they end up in landfill where they'll take centuries to break down."
So is it the nappies or the baby which ends up in landfill?
YUCK!
Do not want those mushrooms.
Mushrooms used to be grown on horse manure, and I doubt they are very "selective". So this is no surprise.
However, it is well known to be a bad idea. You do not grow food for human consumption on human feces, because the risk of contamination is too high. Horse manure is ok, as is growing animal fodder on human feces.
And there are better schemes to get rid of old diapers - since they are rich in high quality cellulose that can be used after a good clean.
farmer communities in Mexico have many years doing exactly that for human consumption
And I bet Mexicans are not the only ones doing it in that way...
Tortured sentence structure anyone? Or are they really are landfilling babies at the experimental mushroom farm???
Not that we ever expected much from the editors at /., but one could hope for a bare minimum of literacy.
I already don't eat mushrooms due to food allergies (and trying to tell them the specific TYPES I'm allergic to is a waste of time).
So this is just another reason for me to NEVER eat a frickin mushroom.
Just...eww.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
My daughter has used 3.129 diapers, and I think she's about average. :-)
Yes, I keep an Excel file with all the diapes purchases
And to recycle them in a sustainable way. Problem solved. In general, I think that should be the case for a lot of things.
Surely it would be more effective to recycle coffee grounds for the purpose. They're already fairly sterile and must be available in huge quantities. Or has Starbucks already found a secondary market?
this is just another reason for me to NEVER eat a frickin mushroom.
How about you read the article? "The project is not intended to produce mushrooms targeted for human consumption, since the main objective is to get rid of diapers to avoid damaging the environment more"
So that's 16k diapers for twins... well, we guesstimated 10k. The thought of carrying that many diapers up to the third floor and then back down fully 'charged' convinced us to use cloth diapers.
Now we just polute the rivers with the laundry detergent :p.
No shit...
8000 nappies. 8000/365 is about 21.
Assuming three years in them, that's seven a day every day.
Babies don't use that many. On a bad day yes, but not on average.
This has to be the most ghetto way to grow shrooms.
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: Grow mushrooms
Phase 3: Profit
Worst. Signature. Ever.
8000 diapers per baby works out to close to ten per day. I doubt my son used anywhere near that (and I was the one to change them much of the time).
Sounds like EPA bullshit to me.
Or support your local cloth diaper service.
www.greenspringdiapers.com
That's very reassuring. Not.
Fungi based solutions like this really need more good press. For those interested here's a video from TED Talks of Paul Stamets giving a presentation on using Oyster Mushrooms to decompose diesel and other peptroleum waste among some other amazing uses of other types of fungi. Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world - http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_...
There's kind of a weird history between the EPA and disposable diapers; this discussion on SW152c (PDF warning) gives some pretty interesting information on how some of those numbers were tabulated.
they end up in landfill where they'll take centuries to break down
They seem to decompose pretty quickly in wet Walmart parking lots... Just saying.
n/t
It's nice to have technology to better dispose of diapers, but it should not be used as an alternative to tackling the main problem, which is that babies now wear diapers over longer and longer periods. The main reason for this is interfering with biofeedback. The better the diaper the less feedback the baby gets so the less it is inclined to change its behavior.
The best way to reduce spent diapers is to reintroduce a form of biofeedback. An irritation. An annoyance. But of course that would interfere with the gains of Proctor and Gamble.
If I might propose an environmental regulation, it would be about the minimum allowed amount of negative biofeedback in pampers.
In other words, from a certain age on it would not be allowed to make them too good.
Key word? Intended because how long you think its gonna be before some employee figures out with the high cost of mushrooms there is profits to be made?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They taste like shit.
Have gnu, will travel.
My daughter
Year one
6x30x12 = 2160
Year two
4x30x12 = 1440
Year 3
Potty trained but even assuming another full year of 1500 diapers it still falls far short of 8000
I always wondered why me dealers house smelled like shit!
How come there is no "gross" mod category? That's a gross oversight.
Table-ized A.I.
3 per day for 3 years = 3285. Then, if they still have to wear them at night, it's 1095 for the next three years. How on earth do you get to 8000?
Just incase someone questions my qualifications: We have raised 4 kids. None of them are used for growing mushrooms now.