Mycomining: perspective on fungi as scavengers of scattered metal, mineral, and rare earth element resources

Mining provides raw materials critical to our energy, agriculture, infrastructure, and technology but is associated with many environmental challenges. Resource recovery alternatives like urban mining rely on inconsistent supply streams and complicated disassembly and sorting, while extreme mining alternatives such as deep sea and space mining are potentially even less sustainable than traditional mining. This perspective investigates biological mining with emphasis on the potential of fungi for scavenging metals, minerals, and rare earth elements. “Mycomining” produces only biomass-based organic waste and can offer more versatile growth conditions than phytomining using hyperaccumulating plants including substrates ranging from soil, wood, water, and rock to living organisms and dark, space-restricted, or extreme i.e., pH levels, high salt, acidic, radioactive environments. This concept could represent a useful supplement to urban and phytomining to offset demand for traditional mining and is particularly viable when conventional mining may be inefficient or uneconomical i.e., with low-grade ores and sites unsuited to traditional mining for geographical, political, or social reasons.