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Tidbits to Think About

by Joyce Wycoff

'Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.'
-- John Steinbeck

Sometimes little pieces of information are like burrs -- they latch onto a piece of your mind and stay there waiting to hook onto another piece of information and form a new idea. Here are some tidbits I've picked up recently from the Utne Reader. Would love to see any you've come across ... send them to staff@thinksmart.com

** BioPlastic

Two companies have developed lines of plastic dinnerware that are redefining the idea of biodegradability. EarthShell's plates and bowls, which have made their way into a few McDonald's and Wal-Mart outlets, biodegrade in 60 to 90 days -- three to five times faster than paper products. Plantic Technologies' corn-based bioplastic literally dissoves before your eyes in about an hour -- just add water.

** From Malls to Main Street

A number of towns across the country, especially inner suburbs, are turning dying regional malls and old strip malls into pedestrian-friendly Main Streets with unique character.

In the Denver suburb of Lakewood, the Villa Italia mall was knocked down this summer and the vast parking lot ripped up. Work crews are now laying down a grid of streets. Over the next several years, a true downtown will rise up along those streets, one with offices, homes, sidewalk cafes, a cinema, a town green, and, of course, shopping. Local citizens wanted more than a place to shop ... they wanted a place to hold a parade when the high school basketball team wins a state championship.

** Magic Mushrooms

Paul Stamets is a 'renaissance mycologist' who believes fungi may hold the answer to 'regreening the planet' and that we should be saving old-growth forests as a matter of national security. The concept is relatively simple ... the main job of fungi is decomposition so it's a matter of matching fungi with whatever needs to be decomposed.

Some mushroom networks can decompose petroleum products, pesticides and herbicides. A couple of years ago Stamets partnered with Battelle Laboratories on a bioremediation experiment focused on a site contaminated with diesel oil. The site was divided into thirds with one team using enzymes, one using engineered bacteria and Stamets using a mushroom network. After eight weeks 95 percent of the hydrocarbons had broken down and the soil was deemed nontoxic. Neither of the other sites showed significant changes.

An additional benefit was that oyster mushrooms grew in Stamets' site, attracting insects, birds and other seeds. Stamets' site became an oasis of life leading to ecological restoration.

For more information:

** Utne Reader -- www.utne.com

** Mushrooms:
http://www.battelle.org/Environment/publications/
Environmental Updates -- Fall 2000, Mycoremediation Technologies
http://www.bfi.org/Trimtab/winter01/
mycroemediation.htm
http://harrington.biology.colostate.edu/
phytoremediation/
http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/articles/
art_fungiallytohabitat.html

** Bioplastic
'Say Goodbye to Plastic' -- Wired
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/
10.07/start.html?pg=8
Bioplastic and Orthopedics
http://www.bioplast.narod.ru/bioplast.html