Rhyze Mushrooms

Micro Mushroom Farms for 3 Community Cafes

The project aimed to build three miniature mushroom farms for three community cafes in Edinburgh and train volunteers from the community spaces to manage the miniature farms autonomously and grow fresh mushrooms using cafe waste. This would create a circular loop whereby food can be produced sustainably year-round indoors.

The project engaged over 50 people from different parts of Edinburgh on issues of climate change and sustainable food production. The project involved running a series of workshops at the three community cafes. The workshops were focused on mushroom cultivation as a means of creating more sustainable food systems but also included discussion on wider issues of sustainability and food.

Carbon savings from the project are created by displacing other less local and less sustainable food sources. The oyster mushrooms grown would not necessarily be displacing regular button mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms have quite a different texture and are more versatile and can therefore be used more effectively than button mushrooms as meat substitutes. In this instance, they would have significantly higher greenhouse gas reductions.

The current average harvests from the three farms are as follows:

Bridgend: 10 kg a month > 46.8kg of CO2 saved

Scran: 4kg a month —>  18.72 kg of Co2 saved

ONC: 6 kg a month —> 28.08 kg of Co2 saved

The three farms built now belong to the three organisations. Rhyze Mushrooms have committed to supply all three community groups with one year’s worth of cultivation supplies to allow them to continue the project at no cost. After that point the groups will supply the cafes with cultivation supplies at cost price to help them keep the project going with minimally low costs.

Quote: “The mushroom project has been a very popular focus of volunteer activity at Bridgend. We have been able to introduce visitors and volunteers to the basics of Mushroom propagation and supply interested parties with starter kits when we do inoculation workshops”

More information about the impact of the project is available online

Find out more by reading Rhyze  Mushrooms application to the Edinburgh Community Climate Fund or visit their website.