Researchers believe they can use mushrooms to accelerate the work of composting toilets.
Lorena Polovina and Isobel McLean have spent nearly a year tinkering in a tiny basement room at UBC on a novel way to make shitting safer and more sustainable. The School of Architecture students may not find the place inspiring, but their work has the potential to make a difference in an often-overlooked area of environmental health: waste management.
They’ve been experimenting with mycelium shells — essentially a bucket made of mushroom roots that traps heat and houses bacteria — to accelerate how composting toilets break down waste. Now, thanks to a $50,000 grant from Campus as a Living Lab, they’re ready to test out the project.
The project — nicknamed the MycoToilet — includes Joe Dahmen, an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA). He’s already used mushrooms to create sustainable furniture and to create an award-winning toilet. Now, he and the team want to use mushrooms to speed up existing composting toilets.
“We’re targeting about half the time of a typical composting toilet to go from fecal waste to safe, non-pathogenic fertilizer,” said Dahmen. “So it’s basically the same process of any composting toilet, but just radically accelerated.”
“We take some mycelium culture, inoculate rye, and then inoculate the sawdust with the rye,” said Polovina. “The sawdust acts as food for the mycelium to grow on and it expands this little network to basically overtake the sawdust and grow in and around it.”
Mycelium growing in bags of sawdust. Bridget Stringer-Holden / The Ubyssey
Once the mycelium has been grown, it is cooked in an autoclave—a device that heats up the sawdust to kill off bacteria that might compete with the mycelium for nutrients. Then, the team will craft the mycelium and sawdust into a bucket shape to fit into the toilet.
Once the insert is shaped, it’s sent to the UBC Department of Microbiology and Immunology, where the team will experiment with different types of heat-loving bacteria to find a combination that will accelerate the decomposition and cleaning of the waste.
“We’ll test the different selection of microbes to find and optimize the breakdown of waste so that we make sure that we have the right blend of microbes,” said Dahmen.
Once the team has the right combination of bacteria and enough inserts made from mushrooms, the UBC Botanical Garden will host a test toilet this summer. Daniel Mosquin, UBC Botanical Garden research manager, will coordinate the next phase of the project.
“It’s the whole idea of using biodiversity to inspire solutions that meet fundamental human problems, particularly if it can be done in a low cost, low impact way,” said Mosquin, “and something that doesn’t rely on a lot of infrastructure.”
Daniel Mosquin explains how UBC’s Botanical Garden will host the MycoToilet. Luke Faulks / The Ubyssey
The team designed the MycoToilet for use in areas that don’t have running water for a sewage system. The Government of Canada estimates that 40% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to sufficient clean water.
“We’re targeting places that don’t have easy access to typical sanitary facilities,” said Dahmen. “If you take the refugee camp example, it’s quite common that there’s a lot of disease, stemming from pathogens in refugee camps due to inadequate sanitation.”
McLean and Polovina are currently working on creating 100 prototypes of the mushroom insert. The insert design is crucial to help speed up the amount of time it takes for composting toilets to clean and break down human waste.
Once the inserts are complete, they’ll be sent to the UBC Department of Microbiology and Immunology. There, the team will experiment with different combinations of bacteria to see what breaks down waste most efficiently. Then, the mushroom insert’s unique ability to hold heat will help the bacteria get to work processing human waste.
The final product will be the result of a years-long partnership between the UBC SALA, the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and the Botanical Garden.
“We’ve been told it’s more a mixture of art and science than just pure science, and I would say that’s true,” McLean said. “We’re kind of at the point now where we understand all the variables that we need to control, so now we can start producing.”
For both McLean and Polovina, the inter-departmental collaboration has been a highlight of the project.
“It’s a very interdisciplinary group combining architecture and engineering and sciences together to make something that’s pretty radical in terms of how human waste is being treated right now,” said Polovina. “I come from a more liberal arts background, so it’s been pretty amazing to sit in these very interdisciplinary team meetings and learn about all these different perspectives, and [to be a part of] something as cool as growing a toilet!”
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
Daniel Mosquin explains how UBC’s Botanical Garden will host the MycoToilet. 
