comScore
  1. Mediaite
  2. Gossip Cop
  3. Geekosystem
  4. Styleite
  5. SportsGrid
  6. The Mary Sue
  7. The Jane Dough
  8. The Braiser

thanks but no thanks

Eating Diapers to Save the Planet

by Jamie Frevele | 1:14 pm, April 26th, 2011


Sometimes, I think environmentalists get a bad rap for trying to tell us to change our less-than-environmentally-friendly habits. They’re only trying to keep the planet clean and not turn it into the garbage dump we had to evacuate in Wall-E. But now I understand why they get that bad rap: bad ideas. It has been discovered that one thing capable of breaking down the cellulose used to make disposable diapers (which takes forever to biodegrade) is a kind of mushroom. And one scientist is proposing that we grow those mushrooms in dirty diapers and eat them.

Oyster mushrooms, which are commonly eaten are usually grown in other forms of waste like coffee grounds, are able to break down the cellulose in diapers, so waste management expert Alethia Vázquez-Morillas of the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico started growing mushrooms in the diapers and, for some reason, ate them. And this is supposed to cut the biodegrading time down from hundreds of years to a few months. But we’d still have to eat mushrooms grown in used diapers. So there’s that.

The diapers in question were contaminated only with urine, and urine from a healthy person is sterile. For more heavy-duty stuff, the diapers would have to be steamed before they were turned over to the mushrooms for feasting.

Dear Science: Please stop being inspired by Saturday Night Live. They’re joking.

(io9)

TAGS: | |


  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001024198090 Scott Mccormick

    The Bear Grylls bar and grill”? funky…

  • Jenny

    Why can’t we just use the mushrooms and then you know not eat them.

  • Jenn

    Surely the mushrooms are biodegradable too?!

  • http://www.facebook.com/1shewolf JoAnna Luffman

    Seems to me the mushrooms would be great for the compost bin after taking care of the diapers. A little more organic material can’t hurt, and anything… unsavory they may absorb would be diluted in the rest of the mess.

  • nrich

    we are ok with eating plants grown in cow poo and watered with grey water. I don’t see how this is all that horrible.

  • http://profiles.google.com/viciousmarblecat Emma Jones

    Why can’t we, y’know, just use cloth diapers?

  • http://skemono.blogspot.com/ Skemono

    And the problem with this is, what exactly?

  • Tehclairemeister

    In my humble opinion, this is a fantastic idea (using mushrooms to get rid of waste quickly and amazingly) and spreading the idea it is NOT on a well read blog is juvenile and harmful. It has been proven time and time again that mushrooms can break down not only diapers, but oil soaked dirt that would otherwise be poisonous for a very long time, and other petroleum products. What you do with it afterward is up to you, most, if not all, of our mushrooms are grown in fertilizer (read:poop) anyway. Seeing this on a blog I really respect and read daily is really sad. Even in jest, this is a badly thought out topic for a piece, you could at least bring up even a BIT of the extremely helpful things mushrooms do for getting rid of waste.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

    What the… was that baby animated by Dreamworks?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R5XX3GCHACCXAPPTURMO2T4G5Q Marian

    The author of this article doesn’t fully understand the bioremediation idea or fungal nutritional requirements…should we tell her that the store bought white mushrooms – Agaricus bisporus (brunnescens) - are grown in horse or chicken manure and we still eat them?
    Urea (even in peed diapers) is a great source of nitrogen…which mushrooms need to develop.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R5XX3GCHACCXAPPTURMO2T4G5Q Marian

    The author of this article doesn’t fully understand the bioremediation idea or fungal nutritional requirements…should we tell her that the store bought white mushrooms – Agaricus bisporus (brunnescens) - are grown in horse or chicken manure and we still eat them? Urea (even in peed diapers) is a great source of Nitrogen which is a requirement for fungi to grow.

X