Australian innovators use mushrooms to transform waste plastic into recyclables

22 Mar 2023 --- Sustainability Victoria, Fungi Solutions and No More Butts are partnering to train mushrooms to eat discarded cigarette butts to turn leftover plastic into new recyclable products.

The organizations are located in Australia, which according to No More Butts, discards approximately 8.9 billion cigarette butts annually. Worldwide, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded as litter every year. 

“In an ideal world, plastic consumption and production would be significantly reduced. As plastic filters aren’t currently on the roadmap for any single-use plastic bans, we need to get creative in considering how to use this plastic waste as a resource,” Shannon Mead, founder and executive director of No More Butts, tells PackagingInsights. 

Mushrooms eating discarded materials (Image credit: Emily Medbury). Upcycle into packaging
The fungi have adaptive digestive systems, which means they can get used to eating challenging materials. Mead calls the process and research “a bit of a sci-fi fantasy.” 

“We want to use this program to see how far science can go. If we can produce a container, or a box, made from cigarette butts, fused with the mycelium (root network of the mushroom) and used to collect millions more butts, how cool would that be?,” he says. 

No More Butts and Fungi Solutions predict that the transformed butts will have uses in insulation, construction, transportation or as a sustainable replacement for polystyrene, which the companies call a “problematic waste stream.” The final product of the mushrooms eating away at cigarette butts is naturally lightweight and insulating. 

“This program is critical to understand the profile of the by-product to make sure that if there is a consideration for food grade packaging or items with close human contact, that the toxins and heavy metals are eradicated through digestion,” asserts Mead. 

“We’re hoping that over time and with generations of cultivation, the fungi will become more targeted toward digesting cigarette butts. Then we hope to see them partially decompose the filter materials and break down some toxic components to create a clean by-product,” adds Amanda Morgan, the founder of Fungi Solutions.

Scaling solutions
The main challenge the companies are predicting to face is the output – whether this program can not only be scaled but also provide a safe by-product that will have demand from packaging and construction industries.

The companies are looking for more cigarette waste to gather substantial data. They call on businesses to be part of the solution and donate their butts. Cigarettes contain plastics that are broken down into microplastics and leak into the environment when discarded. 

“We’re looking for businesses that already collect cigarette butt waste through ashtrays and bins. Instead of letting these butts end up in landfill, we’ll intervene, pick them up for you and use them in our research,” explains Mead.

The butts will be collected through the CigCycle program to divert the plastic waste from landfills and recover the resource.

Disposal circularity
Mead explains that when people “do the right thing” and dispose of their cigarette butts in a correct trash bin, once they hit the waste stream and end up in a landfill, they begin leaching damaging pollutants like arsenic and lead into waterways and soil systems. 

Additionally, he continues that it takes about 15 years for plastic cigarette filters to break down.

“If possible, we’d like to use the material to create vessels in which we could collect more cigarette butts rather than rubbish bins. That’s an example of something that would be a really nice, elegant circular solution for this material,” concludes Morgan.

By Sabine Waldeck