The idea was raised when Do Duc Hoa, Nguyen Thi Thuy Duong and Nguyen Thi Thieu Van, the members of RSL Group spent their intern period at the Hoa Tho Textile & Garment Company in Da Nang.

The students discovered that a big volume of cotton debris was produced during the production process, up to 500 kilos per day. The waste cotton caused serious pollution to the environment, while it was costly to collect the waste.

They also discovered that if the cotton was put in wet places, mushroom clusters would grow on it.

This prompted the students to think of reusing the waste cotton to grow mushroom for food. This is a material with low cost and plentiful supply like other familiar materials such as bagasse and coir.

The students spoke with the managerial board of the company about their ideas and received support from the company. They affirmed that the reuse of waste cotton will bring many benefits – reducing the cost for treatment and easing pollution. It will allow to produce safe mushrooms, lifting housewives’ concerns about the quality and safety of mushrooms.

RSL, a group of students from the environment faculty of Da Nang University of Technology, has successfully used cotton waste to grow mushrooms.

After nine months of carrying out experiments, the product was improved step by step and introduced to the community.

Thuy Duong, a member of RSL, said as students, they did not have much money for experiments, and they found it hard to arrange time for both studying at school and working at laboratory.

She said that since the members of the group did not have basic knowledge about mushroom cultivation, they had to carry out experiments before finding a reasonable cultivation process.

RSL has had its mushroom products tested, and no toxic substance has been found.

RSL has designed the packaging for the product, and is going to set up a website to step up the advertising of the product. It will also survey the market to expand the cultivation scale and improve production quality.

“We are nurturing a plan to act as the bridge to connect safe farm product supply sources with smart consumers,” Duong said.

The students are still trying to mix different materials with cotton shreds in order to increase the protein content in mushrooms. 

RELATED NEWS

VN student wins US invention prize

Hue student invents tool to calculate GPA

Thanh Lich