Parisians wake up with the magic of urban mushrooms fed coffee



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The land, which Parisian breweries throw daily, is perfect for this job and allows you to take a snapshot of the growing trend of urban agriculture.

The mulch is mixed with cardboard and wood chips and pushed into pieces of plastic with pieces of mushrooms. They are then suspended vertically in a dark space and allowed to incubate for fifteen days.

"We reproduce the conditions of the subsoil.The temperature and humidity are comparable," says Arnaud Ulrich, cofounder of UpCycle-The mushroom box, based in Saint-Nom-la-Breteche.

Nestled away from light, the spores of the mycelium fungus, an essential food source for many soil invertebrates, can also help clean polluted soils. After incubation, the bags containing the soils and spores, now completely white, are transferred to another room for "fruiting".

Cue the lights

There, the lights are on and the rate of humidity reduced. The cuts are made in the bags, allowing the mushrooms to come out.

"The mushrooms are" stressed "- which encourages them to want to reproduce and release their spores, to leave the bags," says Ulrich. "It just remains to harvest them."

According to Ulrich, urban agriculture is primarily about recycling organic waste from cities as a way of expanding the transition to a regenerative "circular economy" making better use of scarce resources.

"Thirty percent of urban waste is bio-waste and today only five percent of this organic matter is recycled," he notes. "We only do what they did in the 19th century, but with modern methods."

At that time, "Parisian mushrooms" were also born from the idea of ​​recycling organic materials. The market gardeners cultivated their products in quarries located in the perimeter of the capital, by exploiting the droppings of thousands of horses having contributed to the delivery of vegetables to the market of the Halles, in the center of Paris.

Feel that coffee again

Today, nearly 20 tons of ground coffee are collected every month in and around Paris, mainly in the restaurants of large companies in the west of the city. From there, it is possible to produce about two tons of oyster mushrooms.

15 euros (17 dollars) per kilo, which is equivalent to a "harvest" of 30,000 euros. A campaign is underway to encourage more Parisian cafes to embark on the act.

"It is a virtuous company, we produce between 20 and 30 kg of land per week," says Romain Vidal, 30, owner of the brewery Le Sully in Paris and pioneer of recycling technology. "And our chef puts oyster mushrooms on the menu of the brewery's customers."

The chef shares this view, saying "delighted", describing the mushrooms as thick and juicy.

After each espresso, each cappuccino, Le Sully's servers carry the patterns used as a delivery biker from the coffee company takes them away so that they can be used further.

The deep-rooted coffee culture in Paris means that the products are not lacking: the city produces about 600,000 tons of land each year, according to UpCycle, which helps manage similar projects in several other French cities.

After harvesting, already recycled soils begin their third life, returning to the soil as compost ormushroom compost& # 39; a word game with mushroom, French for mushroom – mixed with mushroom sprigs and wood cellulose.

With their operational system, Ulrich and his employees diversify by installing "Rocket" compost machines in the heart of the La Défense business center in Paris. The machines gobble up organic waste from restaurants, such as peels and leftover food, whether it's meat or fish, as well as cuttings from the grbad.

The resulting accumulated waste produces compost in record time … which will be used to produce more Parisian mushrooms from September.

By Isabel Malsang of AFP

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