What the Muncher® can do now is amazing. But what the Muncher® can do in the future is to build a better world.
Today’s world confronts three major problems – too much waste, too little food, and too much pollution. The Muncher® today can help remediate the problem of too much waste. When it comes to processing organic waste, the Muncher® has no equal.
But the Muncher® can also make major contributions to the other two problems.
One of the reasons that there’s too little food is that there is only so much land that we can use today as farmland, and we don’t use that effectively. We have made the choice to increase food production by using chemical fertilizers. This solves the problem in the short term, but with devastating consequences. Chemical fertilizers burn the soil, and the excess runoff pollutes aquifers. The soil becomes impoverished, and eventually becomes unable to support the organisms necessary for a healthy ecology.
Every ton of waste processed by the Muncher® produces at least 1200 pounds of what now must be classified – as per FDA regulations – as soil amendment. However, according to the soil scientists and mycologists currently involved in its evaluation, Muncher® output will almost certainly be categorized as organic fertilizer and possibly even as a bio-inoculant. For the profit-minded, a good organic fertilizer can sell for dollars per pound, and a bio-inoculant can sell for dollars per ounce. Muncher® output has already been shown to greatly increase both crop size and health in the tests that have been performed.
But beyond being able to preserve existing farmland and restore land which has been depleted, the Muncher® has shown promise of being able to create arable farmland. In preliminary tests, we have grown tomatoes simply by spreading Muncher® fertilizer on top of sand. Of course, one crop of tomatoes will not turn desert into farmland. But the stems and roots of the tomato plants will be tilled into the sand, creating a more enriched foundation for the next crop. This process imitates Nature – but where Nature takes thousands of years to create arable soil, the Muncher® can do it in decades.
Most of the pollution that so drastically impacts the habitability of our planet is a byproduct of industrialization and our attempts to wring more and more productivity out of limited resources. Insects and weeds adversely affect the productivity of farmland, and we have harnessed potent chemicals to kills both of these. However, some of these chemicals have undesirable side effects – not only are they toxic to the life that inhabits the soil, but they are carcinogens. One of the most pervasive of these carcinogens is glyphosate, the active ingredient of RoundUp. Effective though RoundUp is, the fact that glyphosate is a carcinogen has cost Monsanto, the manufacturer of RoundUp, billions of dollars in legal penalties.
Glyphosate is an organophosphate, an organic compound that incorporates the element phosphorous. Phosphorous is essential for life, and so critical to crop production that its presence at certain levels is mandated in fertilizers. Phosphorous is also a critical nutrient for the bacteria that comprise the core of the digestive process by which the Muncher® transforms organic waste. Amazingly, glyphosate – so toxic to humans – is like candy to Muncher® bacteria. Certified laboratory tests have shown that the Muncher® destroys glyphosate in concentrations beyond those normally seen in glyphosate-polluted soil.
Some of the environmental pollutants incorporate organophosphates, and according to the biochemists who have analyzed the Muncher® process, there is every reason to believe that the Muncher® will also prove effective against other organophosphate pollutants.
We have also tested the Muncher’s ability to treat oil spills. Most petroleum-based products are long-chain hydrocarbons – and carbon is an essential element for life. We have only anecdotal evidence in this area, but our plan is to see whether the Muncher® can facilitate environmental cleanup of oil spills on both land and sea.
Finally, the majority of the scientific community believes that climate change is exacerbated by the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, much of which is man-made. There is one guaranteed way to lower the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that is to grow more plants. Just as humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, plants do the exact opposite – taking in carbon dioxide and producing the oxygen on which we all depend. And if there is one thing that we know the Muncher® can do, it is to facilitate the growth of plants. By doing so, the Muncher® can help reverse the adverse effects of climate change.
