Growing mushrooms provides optimal sustainability
Growing mushrooms is a unique blend of recycling, science and efficacy. This powerful combination makes them one of the most sustainably sourced foods in the world.
Mushroom growers in the world are known as the "ultimate recyclers" because of their ability to convert by-products and waste from other sectors of agriculture into the compost or medium used to grow mushrooms. Due to this recycling of other agricultural crops and by-products, mushroom farms have a smaller ecological footprint than almost all other companies.
In fact, when you enter the store and see white or brown mushrooms, you are looking at an incredibly efficient food: today's growers use production practices that use less than 8L of water to produce 500gr of mushrooms, compared to an average of 100L of water per 500gr of others. fresh products. By finding ways to control water use and recycle the available water, mushroom growers can minimize the amount they need and also minimize the impact of their farms on the surrounding environments.
Similarly, mushrooms are a crop with a relatively low energy footprint. 500 kilowatt hour (kwh) of electricity is needed to produce a 1,0 g mushroom. This is the same amount of energy (1 kWh) it takes to run a coffee maker for an hour every day! Due to the way mushrooms are grown, smart use of energy is good for production and good for the environment.
Growing 500 gr. mushrooms is so efficient that only 300 gr. generates CO2 equivalents. This means that if you add up all the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2, a greenhouse gas) from producing 500g of mushrooms – from the compost recipe all the way to what you buy in the store – the equivalent of just 300g of CO2. To give you an idea of how small a carbon footprint is, using 4L of fuel emits almost 9KG of CO2.
Mushrooms are grown all year round and do not require a lot of land.
In fact, one hectare of land can produce 450.000 KG = 450 TONNES of mushrooms. In other words, an acre of land can produce enough mushrooms to fill the length of nearly 4.700 football stadiums.
With every measurement of water and energy input and the low CO2 emissions, mushrooms are a nutritious food with a very small ecological footprint. Mushroom growers are not only the 'ultimate recyclers', but also provide a sustainable, smart food source for a growing world population.