Fungi are the natural world's ultimate recyclers - returning the energy and resources trapped in waste and death back into the ecosystem. The fact that they can even decontaminate brown fields (i.e. parcels of property contaminated with poisonous or toxic waste), makes them something of a meme-model for ecological regeneration. Recycling waste (material, water, etc.), restoring and renovating under-performing buildings and even downcycling all grow (no pun intended) out of this meme.
Moving humanity and our economic systems out of an ecologically dislocated state, and back into an ecologically integrated state, requires us understanding this sort of meme model. Why? Because if you want to play the game well, you need to understand the rules first. Our current way of living is massively inefficient and ineffective at transforming potential energy into realized outcomes. We constantly fight uphill to accomplish what we want, and leave piles of detritus in our wake: detritus we rapidly disown and remove from human ecosystem. If we want to do things better (even do them sustainably) and are looking for a role model, looking to Nature is the place to find it. Our socio-economic systems are only a few thousand years old, the planetary ecosystem is several billion.
Do you think that perhaps the later might have had more time to work out the kinks? Hmmm.
The fungi meme-model invites us to look at every item of waste as a new potential opportunity. Our grandparents chide us for the things we so callously discard, instead of repairing or finding new uses for. Their justification is frugality, but the outcome is still particularly fungal. They minimized waste in their lives, and ensured that things that left their own material ecosystem had been broken down to the greatest point possible. Building upon that, if we ensure that everything that leaves our lives does so at the termination of its effectiveness to us, and transitions into its appropriate economic/ecologic niche for renewal (like a recycling facility), we become more intentionally ecologically integrated - and therefore much more effective organisms.
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