Mushrooms and cradle-to-cradle design
Chester County is right beside Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. I toured one of the mushroom farms with my dad when I was about 7. Apparently, the industry is booming and they’re finding profitable ways of reusing their “waste,” called spent mushroom substrate, into fertilizer for landscapers and the like. Skyland USA is even focusing on a product just for use in green roofs.
They may not know it (I couldn’t find any mention on their website) but what they’re doing is essentially cradle-to-cradle design, something I’ve blogged about before: designing wasteless products, just like nature does, because nothing ever really is waste — it all stays in our ecosystem no matter what we label it.