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By Chris Brown

MHC’s Centre for Innovation researching how fungi can improve landfill compost for more uses

Jul 6, 2023 | 3:18 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Researchers from Medicine Hat College’s Centre for Innovation are attempting to reduce the amount of heavy metal-laden and therefore unusable compost at the city landfill with fungi.

The program is a partnership between the Centre for Innovation and the City of Medicine Hat.

“Compost, made from biosolids of sewage sludge and wood debris, exceeds certain guidelines which limits its use,” explains Allison Campbell, program coordinator and instructor in MHC’s environmental biology and reclamation technology (EBRT) program. “After surveying possible solutions with students from my environmental assessment course, it was shown that biological remediation using plants and soil micro and macro-organisms may be possible.”

Fungal mycelium, or fungal threads which live in places where they can decompose, secrete enzymes which may help to break down any exceedances of heavy metals in the soil. Campbell says this process would improve the compost for a wide variety of uses, including agriculture or oil and gas.

Campbell is working with Abigail McBride, a first-year EBRT student and research assistant, who is assisting with literature review, soil sampling and daily observation of biosolids.

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“The whole role of fungi is to make soil to house life so that they have something to consume,” McBride says. “It’s advantageous for them to be able to degrade or absorb contaminants so that they can continue to have more vegetation to eat. It is really cool, the processes that go into it.”

McBride adds that using fungi boasts many benefits, making the research a potential long-term solution for the City of Medicine Hat.

She says using natural processes reduces the need to use chemicals, is more efficient and is usually less expensive. Once mushrooms are being produced they’ll continue to spore and continually renew.

The researchers are currently awaiting the arrival of mycelial samples, to begin testing their approach at MHC. If the fungal mycelia proves to remediate the compost, they will consider pelletizing the compost to be sold as a soil amendment.

To learn more about MHC’s C4i, visit mhc.ab.ca.