From the outside, it looks like any ordinary nappy – one of the tens of billions that end up in landfill each year. But the Hiro diaper comes with an unusual companion: a sachet of freeze-dried fungi to sprinkle over a baby’s gloopy excretions.
The idea is to kickstart a catalytic process that could see the entire nappy – plastics and all – broken down into compost within a year.
Hiro was one of several innovations recognised this week by the Future is Fungi Awards, which honour groundbreaking innovations using fungi to tackle some of the planet’s most urgent environmental challenges.
Several forces are converging to put fungi in the spotlight, said Prof Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England in Bristol, who is investigating whether fungi could be incorporated into unconventional computing circuits.
“First, people are beginning to appreciate that fungi are neither plants nor animals, but their own vast and largely unexplored kingdom with extraordinary biological abilities,” he said. “Second, practical demonstrations – fungal packaging, fungal leather, fungal insulation, even fungal electronics – have shown that these organisms can replace or augment many industrial materials. Third, we’re facing urgent global challenges: waste, pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate stress.
“Fungi thrive in environments that humans conside
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