Paulding County

East Paulding High STEM students say they can shrink landfills by letting mushrooms do it

By Berndt Petersen, WSB-TV
By Berndt Petersen, WSB-TV

PAULDING COUNTY, Ga. — Mushrooms aren’t just good in spaghetti sauce or stuffed with cheese, they can eat plastic and STEM students in Paulding County are proving it.

Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen was at East Paulding High School where their experiment may reduce the need for landfills.

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When 12th-grader Justinne Tomedonou puts it under the microscope, she does not like what she sees. 

“I don’t really like mushrooms. For real,” Tomedonou said.

In this case, it’s mushroom spores in the STEM lab at East Paulding High School. 

They’re working on an important project with a very catchy title. 

“Fungi: A Solution to Pollution,” agriculture teacher Nathan Chapman said. 

Chapman and his three-student team spent three months learning how mushrooms can eat plastic and shrink landfills. 

“We’re using spores that are put on the plastic to see if they could break down the plastic,” 10th-grader Anshula Pawar said.

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Turns out they can, and the Samsung Corporation was certainly impressed. 

East Paulding High is the state champions in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition, which includes a $12,000 award to the school’s STEM program.

“Fungi: A Solution to Pollution” is now running for the national title with a prize worth $100,000. The STEM team’s best and brightest say even the untrained eye can look into the microscope and see the evidence.

“It’s not as hard as you think it is. Anybody can go outside and gather plastic and try it themselves. So far it looks like our theory is working,” Tomedonou said.

To learn more about East Paulding High’s STEM program, click here.

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