SF BAY AREA GREENS OIL SPILL CLEANUP WITH
OILY-HAIRMAT-EATING MUSHROOMS

OILY-HAIRMAT-EATING MUSHROOMS TREATABILITY STUDY INFORMATION (More Photos)
Also see: How everyone can help

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Photo by Mona Miri ................................................... Photo by Paul Stamets

The location is being prepared for the study. People coming together from all over the Bay Area, Half Moon Bay, Sacramento, Washington State... to make this happen for the environment!


WHY THIS WORKS

"You shampoo your hair because it gets greasy. Hair is very efficient at collecting oil out of the air, off surfaces like your skin and out of the water, even petroleum oil. Hair is adsorbant (as in "clings to" unlike absorbant which is to "soak up.") There are over 300,000 hair salons in the US and each collects about 1 pound of hair a day. Right now, most of that goes into the waste stream, but it should all be made into hairmats." Phil McCrory of Smartgrow.net, hairmat inventor and barber (more info).

Fungi (mushrooms) love hair and nails:
As any one with a toenail fungus can attest. And if you have any friends with dreadlocks, ask if you can cut one lock off and cut it open to see what's growing in there. Lots of cool stuff!

Fungus also loves oil:
"The roots of mushrooms, called mycelium (http://www.fungi.com/info/sems/index.html), produce enzymes that unlock wood fibers, which are composed of strings of carbon-hydrogen molecules in the form of cellulose and lignin. Similarly oil and most petroleum products are held together by these same molecular bonds. The mushroom mycelium breaks these bonds, and then re-constructs the oil into carbohydrates, fungal sugars, that make up the mushroom's physical structures." Paul Stamets, Fungi.com

So, first you soak up spilled oil with hair, then you turn the oily hair into compost with mushrooms. Mother Nature doesn't make waste, only opportunities. You just need to pay attention to her clues. For eons, she has been hanging oily bangs in front of our eyes and giving us nail fungus on our toes for a reason. But, she's concerned that humans are a bit slow as a species, thus clearly in need of an extra nudge.

An extraordinary number of key people (ecologists, scientists, politicians, press, funders, suppliers, Trustees, volunteers, permit experts, transportation and petroleum executives, labs, professors, lawyers...) needed to be able to connect quickly and in a "think outside the box" location during an oil spill. (See our Thank You Page.) And the rest is... our greener future!



DID YOU KNOW?
By far the greatest source of oil in our oceans comes from households. We can make a difference, according to the Smithsonian Institution and the Environment Protection Agency:

Every year, an estimated 706 million gallons of oil enter our planet's oceans:

Used Motor Oil dumped down drains and from street runoff accounts for 363 million gallons in our oceans!
50% of Americans change their own motor oil, but only 1/3 of that oil is collected and recycled.
Also, one typlcal 5 quart oil change improperly dumped can contanimate millions of gallons of freshwater.

Routine ship maintenance, washing containers - make up 137 million gallons of oil in our oceans.

From air pollution - 92 million gallons

Natural seepage of oil bubbling up from the sea bottom - 62 million gallons

Large Spill Accidents - 37 million gallons

Offshore drilling - 15 million gallons


UPDATES

Update 12/7/07
WOW - look at the mushrooms already! (see pictures)
We were a little worried about this unusual cold snap here in San Francisco. But no need, we took the temperatures and there's so much growing going on it's over 100 degrees in those bins! Actually, it's too hot, so we're going to have to cool them down to get more around 70s- 80s.

Update 12/6/07
Rainy day at the site, our tarp tent is getting some pools. Robert Boggs of the Department of Toxics Substances and Controls has an excellent low tech suggestion. We'll put huge Yoga Balls in each bin under our tarp, to help the run-off go where it's supposed to.

Update 12/5/07
Huge thanks to Tehan Carey for our marathon meeting this morning to create an extra fun(gi) fundraising How You Can Help page to cover all the analysis of the Treatability Study and the costs for launching the green jobs program to make the hairmats in house for future oil spills.

Fungi.com crew is heading off - but will be back 12/18/07. Paul, Dusty and David drive over 1000 miles home to Washington around closed roads due to these crazy storms we're getting.

Update 12/4/07
Yesterday was a huge success! Thanks to all the volunteers and Presidio staff! (see pictures)
Now to the paperwork and posting of pictures.

Maryann Francis of St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County is connecting us with Linda Levitsky and Allysyn Klipinger of East Bay Depot regarding the Green Jobs for sorting hair and making hairmats for future oil spills.

Update 12/3/07
STARTING THE OILY-HAIRMAT-EATING MUSHROOM COMPOST LASAGNA TODAY (see pictures)
Today we do the first row of bins with used motor oil.

Huge thanks to Gary Colbert at Evergreen Oil for providing the 20 gallons of used motor oil for our treatability study. Thanks to Cynthia Knowles at SF Environment and Paul at SF Recycling for connecting us to Gary.

Yvonne Addassi, CA Department of Fish and Game and Laura Philips of Incident Command have great news for us! We can get Cosco Busan recuperated oil after all! But it's not going to be easy, they're really doing all they can to help this treatability study.

Lisa,

Dave Ebarle is assigned to coordinate what I hope is the last action items
associated with this project.

Jim Vreeland, from EPA, is awaiting a release form from our City Attorney.
She is diligently attempting to get this done so that we can proceed with
the acceptance of the oil by Thursday. The Unified Command would like the
City of San Francisco to "accept" this hazardous materials and Dave will
work with either the EPA or DPH on a process for this acceptance. I am
hoping to have it occur near where the delivery point is so as to keep it
simple.

Dave will be in contact with you once these issues and the release are
complete.

Regards,
Laura A. Phillips, Executive Director
Department of Emergency Management

Update 12/1/07 - 12/2/07 - Oakland Museum's 38th Annual Fungus Fair
Paul Stamets, Fungi.com - Fungi and mycelium expert- will be giving public lectures on December 1st and 2nd 2007

Paul Stamets, Ken Litchfield, SF Mycelium Society and Lisa Gautier, Matter of Trust, will be doing a roundtable at the Oakland Museum Fungus Fair 12:30 pm December 2nd 2007

Update 11/30/07 -
Our thanks to the SF Chronicle 11/30/07!

SF Public Utilities Commission is dropping off the hazardous waste protective gear and more of the hairmats Monday at 10 AM.

Next meet for mushroom lasagna volunteers is at the Presidio Compost site is Monday at 9 AM.

Update 11/29/07
Although our first choice was to remediate some of the gallons of nonrecyclable Cosco Busan oil so nearby, we understand that this is going to have wait for permission and that our scientific results will actually be more impressive with Plan B.

What is most important is that this is a best management practices study for future oil spills. One of our tests will actually be just putting hairmats and mushrooms in a container of Bunker C, and if that proves successful, then NRC and other groups will be provided with that information for remediating the Cosco Busan waste at their own sites. Instead of paying to have this waste incinerated, they're interested in cost effective methods that both spare the air and end up with nontoxic compost they can sell to freeway landscapers for a profit!

Update 11/28/07 - Coast Guard suggests using new Bunker C for Presidio Treatability Study

Our oil-soaked mats are with all the rest of the toxic material from the Cosco Busan oil spill that has been collected and is being stored by the NRC Environmental Services company. David Dell'Osso at NRC is recycling everything they can, but still have a few thousand gallons of non-recyclable waste; thus, plenty that they would like to contribute to our remediation study. NRC needs the permission from the Coast Guard at Incident Command Center to release it. And Coast Guard needs permission from the State of California, because the fuel is being tested and analyzed and is evidence in a crime scene. 11/28/07 The Coast Guard was told that the State of California had asked for a second analysis and that that could take weeks. Laura Phillips, Department of Emergency Management at Incident Command is working with all of us and everyone is doing all they can. But in the meantime, the Coast Guard has suggested a Plan B.

If release of the oil to us is delayed indefinitely due to litigation issues, we will start a series of concurrent studies with:

1. new Bunker C fuel which is what you saw in the water on November 7th, but even more potent than what is in storage after all this time at NRC Environmental Services.

2. used motor oil which accounts for an estimated 363 million gallons of annual oil. This is something that the public is responsible for and can fix, when we are made aware of the consequences!

Update 11/27/07
PRESIDIO SITE SET UP - Huge thanks to all the volunteers that came out to help us! You're such a fun crowd and the site looks wonderful! And we're really grateful to everyone at the Presidio Trust for letting us use this space! (see pictures)

Pond liner will be delivered at 2pm

Update 11/26/07
Strawbales arriving, pondliner is to be delivered on Tuesday.

Update 11/25/07
Kudos to Ken Litchfield is pulling triple duty between Randall Museum, setting up the Oakland Museum Fungus Fair and the Presidio project volunteers. Jennifer Gorospe is helping Ken and Lisa (Exec. Dir. of Matter of Trust) with plans for the site and supply lists. YAY and Thanks again!

Update 11/24/07
Incident Command is saying that it would be very difficult for us to get our oil soaked hairmats back for this study. However, they have lots of liquid Cosco Busan oil in vats that they could get us gallons from, and if we have more clean hairmats we can simulate the spill and study the remediation on oily hairmats using that. It's the same oil. We'll take whatever we can get, the point is to show an alternative to incineration, not to find our original mats.

Update 11/23/07
It's Thanksgiving weekend and Daniel Homsey of SF Mayor's office and Mike Plant of Public Utilities Commission are being so helpful getting us contacts for making this study happen.

Update 11/22/07
Happy Thanksgiving - It's a bright and sunny day and the Environmental Protection Agency has asked for volunteers to come out and help do one last official cleanup of Ocean Beach. There will be supplies at Sloat and Lincoln parking lots. There is really very little oil, but there is a lot of fluorescent green foam that is easily picked up by the hairmats. (see pictures) It may be from the sewage or it may be some of the solvent used in the cleanup, nobody here is sure. It's not the same color as the surfers see in Monterey from the Red Tide going on now.

Update 11/21/07
Greg Williams, Andy Berna-Hicks, Robert Boggs of Department of Toxics Substances and Controls and Patrick Fohsdal of San Francisco Department of Public Health are all so helpful and getting us all the necessary information for the Treatability Study Exclusion paperwork that we need.

The Presidio Trust is donating us a temporary lease on their Compost Site and rushing all of the paperwork and legalities for us.

Hartford Insurance is helping us provide all the necessary coverage and information to the agencies that need to see it before the holiday weekend.

Update 11/20/07
We've set up a Thank you page to celebrate everyone who is participating in this project! We can't say it enough - this is truly exciting and growing bigger and better than even we'd dreamed it could be.

See our Ocean Beach Oil Spill Eco-Cleanup Updates 11/9/07 - 11/19/07 and Photos