Bioremediation of Roofing Waste: Mycocycle

60-100 million tons of roofing waste is dumped in US landfills each year, and there is currently no viable option for its recycle or reuse. The tear-off waste is voluminous and heavy. Landfills are already overburdened in most major municipalities and there is an urgent need for better solutions to the space used, emissions released, and environmental impacts caused by all roofing waste.

Industry estimates tell us that millions of square feet of asphalt-based roofing installed throughout the United States will be torn-off and dumped over the next decades with minimal options for landfill diversion. However, there is promising research showing that environmentally toxic materials with similar chemical make-up to roofing waste can be safely neutralized through biological means. Using a natural technology known as bioremediation, we hypothesize that roofing waste can be completely digested in an engineered ecosystem, rendering it nontoxic while creating useful byproducts.

The implications of this solution are staggering – potentially saving tens of millions of tons of non-recyclable roofing waste from the landfills, using a safe and natural technology, with byproducts of mostly water, oxygen and soil. All environmental pollutants in the roofing waste would be neutralized or recovered. More importantly, the technology may be transferrable to countless other waste materials there are not currently recyclable and end up in a landfill.

Utilizing an engineered ecosystem to render a clean by-product, there is also the potential to take mycelium growth from the feedstock and re-enter it into the manufacturing process establishing a closed-loop economy for the products: from the roof to the roof. We have the opportunity to innovate this waste stream and develop multiple value streams as a result of the by-products, while diverting the millions of tons of waste from landfills or incineration.