Lisa Gautier & Paul Stamets Response to SF Oil Spill- DAY 1

hair and mushrooms probably aren't the first things to come to mind when you're preparing to clean up an oil spill. Yet that's exactly what a team of volunteers have used to mop up the errant oil slicks that have washed up on beaches around San Francisco Bay.

Lisa Gautier, who provided the volunteers with 1,000 hair mats, explained that hair acts as a sponge, naturally absorbing the oil from both air and water. She runs Matter of Trust, a nonprofit that matches businesses' donations to smaller, needy nonprofits; her organization makes money in part by collecting human hair from local salons, sending them to Georgia to be woven into mats before selling them to the SF Department of the Environment to soak up used motor oil.

So where exactly do the mushrooms factor in? Once the hair mats have absorbed the oil, oyster mushrooms begin to grow on the mats, consuming the viscous substance. After the mushrooms have finished absorbing all the oil - a process that takes about 12 weeks - the hair mats can be reused as nontoxic compost.

The hair mats have already been put to good use by over 700 volunteers. Gautier is hoping her hair mats will catch on; she has already contacted a Chinese company that specializes in industrial-sized hair mats about providing her with more and is considering making larger sea booms by stuffing hair into nylon stockings

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

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• Lisa
• gautier
• Paul
• Stamets
• San
• Francisco
• oil
• spill
• hair
• mats
• Mycelium
• Running
• How
• Mushrooms
• Can
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• the
• World

[euripideesshreds]

Stamets is brilliant. People like him represent the future of the human race. These are people with simple genius solutions to every kind of issue we have. Thank God for them and all the work they do.

[zekehooper]

news reporters are so dumb!

[ogskeetdizzle]

question what about the salts in the water? how is this going to work , and why are we not using it right now on the spill off of louisiana. i've seen all of paul's work i actually have some stamets 7 sittin in my cupboard.

also get on the case of the white nose bat syndrome. the bats need paul's help, bats eat 1000 mosquitos a day each. mosquitos carry disease, we live in closed quarters in cities..... u get the idea...

[cavemanboborj]

it's been two years. What was the result? Did you get soil? What happened on day 728?

[alienclimber]

Its a great idea , simple and fantastically useful for the planet (the big oil companies should be paying you a fortune getting these things installed en masse)- but really needs to be presented in a far snappier way, i bet most people will switch off even before the demo at end. Even the reporter at the end says "WE NEED TO SIMPLIFY THIS A LOT". Do that and the world's your oyster (mushroom) !

WELL DONE

[baadbug1]

Cool!!

[thomasmc1957]

In another talk of his, he spoke of completely remediating an oil spill site in just 8 weeks, using ordinary oyster mushrooms.

[sellin55]

I would like to know how fast were you able to clean and remediate the spill site

[luguiunicamp]

Oh this is fucking interesting. Do you know where can I buy some hair mat like that?