This document provides an overview of natural soil remediation methods that ordinary people can do themselves, including composting, phytoremediation, and mycoremediation. It explains that composting uses microbes to break down contaminants, phytoremediation uses plants, and mycoremediation uses fungi. Specific techniques are described, such as using oyster mushrooms to break down petroleum or turkey tail mushrooms to treat other toxins. Beginner plants and mushrooms are recommended. The document promotes using these natural methods to both remediate soil and improve its overall health and biodiversity.

1. A resource for grassroots soil remediation products, education, and community
Remove toxins from the soil in small residential lots using passive, non-invasive, soil-building natural
processes

2. What is:
Grassroots Soil Remediation?

3. What is Soil Remediation?

4. Remedying Soil
Taking Bad/Unhealthy Things
Out of Soil

5. What are
Bad/Unhealthy
Things in Soil?

6. Everything on This List

7. And Almost Everything on This List
(if there’s too much of it)

8. How Do These Unhealthy
Things Get in Soil?

9. Houses, factories, manufacturing, construction, fecal matter, transportation, rain events, lawn treatments, paint, cleaning, etc.

10. How are these things removed?
How does remediation work?

11. - E.P.A.
Remediation Processes

12. Dig it all up and replace it with clean soil

13. Let it breathe itself out

14. Wash it and throw out the bad stuff

15. Set it on Fire!

16. None of these are something
someone can do on their own
Plus other issues like being prohibitively expensive, looking ugly, being loud and disruptive,
and destroying all life in the soil and all the wildlife habitats on the site

17. Which methods can an everyday person do?

18. Mycoremediation

19. Grassroots Soil Remediation is
remediation that is safe and
plausible for an ordinary* person
to do.
*ordinary, in this case, meaning people without specific soil science and remediation education and
training that do not have the funds/access/support of remediation companies.
People without soil remediation day jobs.

20. All Natural Soil Remediation
Plus it develops the soil, is much prettier, improves the soil so that it can hold water better and capture
carbon, improves and creates habitat for local wildlife and bees, and reduces erosion.
It’s typically much cheaper. The trade off is that it’s slower. It runs at nature’s speed.

21. Bioremediation*
Phytoremediation
Mycoremediation

22. *Bioremediation has 2 meanings, depending on who you ask:
- Using special microbes (usually bred in a lab) to eat specific toxins
(microbial remediation)
or
- Using all-natural remediation processes / using nature to fix nature
One of these the is accessible to the layperson, one of these isn’t.
I’m mostly just going to say ‘Compost’, because compost is the layperson’s way to
breed helpful microbes that eat toxins.

23. Compost
Phytoremediation
Mycoremediation

24. What are these natural grassroot methods?
How can we use them?

25. COMPOST!

26. COMPOST!
Bioremediation / Microbial Remediation
COMPOST! VERMICULTURE! MICROBES! BENEFICIAL BACTERIA!
First up -

27. Microbial Remediation
“Microbial Remediation uses microorganism to either degrade organic contaminants or to bind heavy
metals into more inert and less biological available forms.
“Microorganisms break down contaminants by using them as a food source or metabolizing them with a
food source.”
-Leila Darwish

28. “If you are doing any restoration project,
healthy soil is the foundation.”
- Marika Smith, Victoria Compost Education Center

29. Compost
decayed organic material (as of leaves and grass) used to improve soil especially for growing crops.
- Merriam - Webster Dictionary

30. Compost
Compost Tea
Vermiculture
Microbes
Mycorrhizal fungi
Healthy bacteria
Worms
Aeration
pH balance
dilution
Methods & Benefits

31. Healthy Compost
Nitrogen (green) + Carbon (brown) + Moisture + Oxygen
Top Dressing

32. Get composting instructions at:
https://www.boston.gov/departments/public-works/composting-boston

33. Make your
own compost
or take part in
community
composting

34. PHYTOREMEDIATION!

35. Phytotechnology
“Phytotechnology is the use of vegetation to remediation, contain, or prevent contaminants in soils,
sediments and groundwater, and/or nutrients, porosity and organic matter.
It is also a set of planning, engineering and design tools and cultural practices that can assist landscape
architects, site designers, engineers and environmental planners in working on current and future
individual sites, the urban fabric and regional landscape.”
- Kirkwood and Kennen
Second up -

36. Types of Phytotechnologies
Phytodegradation - plant destroys it
Rhizodegradation - microbes in soil destroy it
Phytovolatilization - plant releases it as a gas
Phytometabolism - plant uses it for growth, incorporates it into biomass
Phytoextraction - plant extracts and stores it, must be harvest and removed for treatment
Phytohydraulics - plant pulls up water, contaminants may come with it
Phytostabilization - plant holds it in place
Phytoaccumulation - plant collects contaminants from air and stores it
Rhizofiltration - roots and soil filter water
Phytobuffering - proactive plant choice prevents future contamination

37. Limited contaminants/soil conditions
Relatively shallow
Removing plants/risk exposure to humans
Maintenance and monitoring costs
Time/plant growth time
Natural systems/climate is variable and
unpredictable
Availability of plant stock
Legality and lack of understanding
Opportunities and Constraints
Plant-based: natural, passive, solar-powered
Diverse toxins on diverse types of sites
Leaves soil intact, even improved
Less expensive when applied correctly
High public acceptance
Integrated into other vegetation and design
Pollution prevention
Indicator species

38. Lower Maintenance Phytoremediation Techniques
Phytodegradation - plant destroys it
Rhizodegradation - microbes in soil destroy it
Phytovolatilization - plant releases it as a gas
Phytometabolism - plant uses it for growth, incorporates it into biomass
Phytoextraction - plant extracts and stores it, must be harvest and removed for treatment
Phytohydraulics - plant pulls up water, contaminants may come with it
Phytostabilization - plant holds it in place
Phytoaccumulation - plant collects contaminants from air and stores it
Rhizofiltration - roots and soil filter water

39. *The list excluded techniques that involve planting species that accumulate metal and
then having to extract the toxin plants and safely dispose of them
The remaining techniques involve the plant doing all the work with no extraction
necessary

40. Phytoremediation is better at treating:
In descending order:
Nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus
Chlorinated Solvents
Pesticides
Petroleum
Salts
Explosives
Metals
Radionuclides
POPs

41. Beginner Remediation Plants
Petroleum: Herbaceous ryegrass, Alfalfa + poplars
Lolium perenne, Medicago sativa, Panicum virgatum
Chlorinated Solvents: Soybeans, Goldenrod + poplars
Glycine max, Solidago spp.
Pesticides: Mustard, Irises, Clover + wetlands and poplars
Brassica campestris, Iris spp., Trifolium spp.
Persistent Organic Pollutants: Ox-Eye Daisy, Queen Anne’s Lace, Alfalfa
Chrysanthemum leucanthemum, Daucus carota, Medicago sativa

42. Make This!

43. Or These!

44. Toxic Soil Busters
Worchester, MA
Example of a
group doing this
for themselves…
Fighting lead
contamination

45. MYCOREMEDIATION
!

46. Mycoremediation
“...the use of fungi, specifically mushrooms, for creating simple yet effective biomass capable of breaking
down environmental and industrial pollutants.”
“Research has proven the efficacy of using fungi to degrade contamination such as PCBs, aromatic
hydrocarbons, and oil spills.”
- Tradd Cotter
Third up -

47. It’s the part of the mushroom
underground (the mycelium) that’s
doing all the work breaking down
toxins.
Not the fruiting body.
Mycelium, the best part

48. Beginner Remediation Mushrooms
Oysters: King Oyster, Pearl Oyster Phoenix Oyster
Pleurotus eryngii, Pleurotus ostreatus, Pleurotus pulmonarius
Turkey Tail
Trametes versicolor

49. Oyster Mushrooms on straw Turkey Tails on wood

50. Buy it ready to grow in a bag
Or a block of myceliated sawdust

51. Or start it in a liquid culture
Then bulk it up with grain

52. Amazon
Mycorenewal
Project
Example of a group
doing this for
themselves...
Fighting oil spills in
the rainforest

53. “Earth Repair” by Leila Darwish
good source book for compost

54. ‘Phyto: Principles and resources for site remediation and
landscape design’ by Kate Kennen and Niall Kirkwood
It’s THE book on Phytoremediation.

55. Resource:
‘Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation’ by Tradd Cotter

56. Resource:
‘Radical Mycology’ by Peter McCoy

57. Everything by Paul Stamets

58. Paul Stamets created the ‘MycoBoom’ to clean up oil spills with mycelium

59. Compost
Phytoremediation
Mycoremediation

60. All 3 methods you can
do in your backyard

61. Make it more
Beautiful AND Healthy

62. THANK YOU!
If you’d like to learn more, please visit our website!
www.equiterraco.com