Mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms, let’s talk about the plants that aren’t. Mushrooms grow upon dead matter in order to live so the natural living space for them is anywhere you can find something dead. Leave food out long enough and if the spores are there they may grow. They streak across forests and wedge themselves into tiny nooks and crannies. Yet here we find them occupying a new place, the trash. To be more specific it is the organic trash of our own making, coffee beans. Oyster mushrooms are capable of growing in the remains of used coffee grounds and this has inspired a number of people to use it for that purpose. Let’s check out some of the companies!
Back to the Roots is a company that collects coffee grounds from local coffee shops and then begins growing mushrooms from them. However they aren’t harvesting these mushrooms. They sell them as small packs for people to buy, continue growing them and then eat them. They have also designed numerous garden-in-a-jar kits for growing different plants as well. They are based out of sunny California. The average box they sell costs $19.99.
Fungi Futures is another company working in a similar manner, making the same boxes. They are U.K. based and sell their boxes at £24.00.
Espresso Mushroom Company is another one but they also sell seedbombs (a small pod filled with flower seeds), wallets, coffees and towels. They differ though in their availability if only slightly. Since everyone is selling oyster mushrooms there isn’t much variety. This company does have one different option for that. The regular pack costs £17.95 but for £19.95 you can buy a version where the mushrooms are pink. They are also U.K. based.
Life Cykel is another mushroom grower based out of Australia. However they charge $28 for one of their boxes so it is a bit more expensive.
What’s great is that these companies have the same focus on urban development. They’re located in cities and interact with the communities as well as produce all of their products there and collect all of their raw materials nearby. It enables more people to work closer to home in cities and distribute these mushrooms directly to their customers. I should point out that a lot of the packs look awfully similar to one another but whether or not the “idea” is common or inspired, well I’ll let you judge. It would be nice if a company could extend this service to all mushroom species but I guess that innovation will have to wait till later.
The HIFA coffeemaker is a bit different. Only a design so far, it is basically the same design as the rest but used in a different way. Instead of ordering a cardboard package from one of the companies above and then watering it and throwing away the package after, it is a plastic pot which you can reuse. This would also be useful for people going through large amounts of coffee grounds in your home and wanting mushrooms as well.
Here’s a Gordon Ramsey video describing some different species of mushrooms:
For some extra confusion here is some mushroom coffee. Check out their site if you’re interested.
I you’d like to know about an additional usage of mushrooms I’ll refer you to the Mushroom Death Suit created by Coeio.
Tome of Trovius 