Texas startup sells plastic-eating fungi diapers to tackle landfill waste

The Manila Times

Texas startup sells plastic-eating fungi diapers to tackle landfill waste  Could baby poop and fungi work together to tackle landfill waste? That’s the idea behind a new product launched by an Austin, Texas, startup that sells disposable diapers paired with fungi intended to break down the plastic.  Each of Hiro Technologies’ MycoDigestible Diapers comes with a packet of fungi to be added to the dirty diaper before it is thrown in the trash. After a week or two, the fungi is activated by moisture from feces, urine and the environment to begin the process of biodegradation.  Disposable diapers contribute significantly to landfill waste. An estimated 4 million tons of diapers were disposed of in the United States in 2018, with no significant recycling or composting, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Diapers take hundreds of years to naturally break down — the very first disposable diaper ever used is still in a landfill somewhere. REUTERS VIDEO  Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe  Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net  Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion   Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital   Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer Stitcher: https://tmt.ph/stitcher  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein  Soundcloud: https://tmt.ph/soundcloud   #themanilatimes #tmtnews #worldnews

Transcript

00:00so we chose diapers because diapers the number one household plastic waste item number three

00:16waste item in a landfill and you know most babies go through up to six thousand diapers in their

00:24lifetime and every diaper takes four to five hundred years to break down the number of diapers

00:29that end up in a landfill every year can circle the earth 33 times per year and the very first

00:34disposable diaper is still in a landfill somewhere today so you know it's a it's a crazy thing there

00:41is a deleterious lasting effect that we haven't really thought about and considered because you

00:47know when you throw something away no one's asking themselves where's away and now that plastic is

00:53leaching back into our systems to a point where it's entered our own bodies our brains bodies and

00:58and bloodstreams to the tune of like a credit card a week inside these this little pouch our little

01:04friendly fungi that are sleeping inside and when the baby poops or peas you just literally take off

01:10the diaper you drop the whole pouch in you don't have to open it you drop the whole thing and you

01:14close it and you throw it away in the trash like normal and in a couple of weeks these little

01:18friendly fungi will be fertilized by our baby's poop or pee and we'll start growing and we'll start

01:23growing and then start eating the diaper which is cool and then eventually it'll break down

01:28hero uses a blend of fungi and they are very interesting plastic eating fungi which is obviously

01:36very relevant to our modern problems modern-day life gave us a lot of amazing things and many of those

01:41amazing things came with plastics anywhere from sterile medicine to cars and their safety and fuel economy

01:48but also we have an end-of-life problem with plastics in general broadly speaking and studies outside for

01:56example in a landfill or in a composting environment are very different in Michigan versus Florida and

02:02those conditions dramatically impact accelerate or deaccelerate that micro digestion process as we call

02:09it so we have to do enough studies to make sure we're within this scope but we see very quick growth in

02:16three to six months in ideal conditions but in order to make a consumer facing claim we have to

02:21have more data and again we hope to have that data in 2026 here we have our hero technology with a full

02:28size diaper in a jar and as you can see it's already started to take over the diaper and almost fully

02:34emerge it and here we have the same thing after six months so you can see that it's taken over even much

02:43much more here we're seeing the diaper being digested but you can see that the piece of the diaper sometimes

02:50referred to as the ear with the velcro piece is usually one of the last parts to get digested yeah

02:56here you can see three months after the first jar how it's all fully taken over you can't really see any

03:03pieces of the diaper and here we have roughly after nine months this end product is just digested plastics

03:15and essentially earth funny enough for evolutionary purposes essentially all plastic is made out of

03:22fossil fuels all fossil fuels is dead trees and animals and many many many moons ago fungi evolved to

03:29break down trees especially this hard to break down compound in trees called lignin which is carbon

03:35backbone is very similar to the carbon backbone of plastics because essentially they're made out of

03:40the same thing there's currently about 132 known species to break down plastics and here at hero we've

03:47studied many of them and many that don't have any public research yet and we focus on commercializing

03:53them making themselves staple for specific plastic use cases and training and evolving them to break

03:59down those specific plastics

04:29you

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