[AG-EQ] Kombucha

[Jewel]

I copied the following, directly, from the Mother Nature Network.  It looks OK on my computer and, I 
hope, on yours too.

          Jewel



jar and pitcher of kombucha tea
This fermented brew may not seem appetizing, but kombucha fans swear by its healing properties. 
(Photo: Dewald Kirsten/Shutterstock)


But along the way to whipping up a bottle of this wonder tonic you're likely to encounter a curious 
creature that's essential to the brewing process.

That would be the scoby - a slime-covered organism that resembles a flat jellyfish. An acronym for 
"symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast," the scoby is the living heart of every kombucha-brewing 
operation.

But this quivering hockey puck's work may extend far beyond giving you a health boost. It may be a 
tonic for our plastic-addled planet.

kombucha
That's not a jellyfish swimming in that kombucha; it's a scoby. (Photo: Daniel S 
Edwards/Shutterstock)


According to the website for MakeGrowLab, the design studio Janusz co-founded in 2018, scobys may be 
the ultimate packaging for dry and semi-dry food. A thin layer of scoby seals air-tight. It doesn't 
break easily. It's an antibacterial barrier. And it can protect food for at least six months.

Water doesn't faze it either.

Did we mention you can eat it too? Even if you're not down with scarfing back kombucha slime, the 
planet certainly has an appetite for it. Scobys biodegrade easily, fortifying the soil along the 
way.

As Juliette Bretan writes in OneZero, Janusz came up with the idea while making kombucha. She noted 
how the maturing scoby eventually formed a "waxy, pancake-like membrane atop the liquid, protecting 
the kombucha underneath."

What if that very dedicated membrane could be persuaded to protect other foodstuffs?

She gave the fermentation process a boost by adding agricultural waste to the bacteria-yeast 
cocktail. It also allowed her to ramp up production of these thin protective layers, while producing 
zero waste.

"We had to find a solution to keep the material home-compostable but make it scalable," tells 
OneZero.

No longer the unsung hero that nurtures and protects kombucha tea, the scoby was reborn as SCOBY 
Packaging, a product that Janusz hopes will inspire a biorevolution.

Which begs the question: Scoby-doo, where are you? Well, there's a crucial reason why your granola 
bar isn't tucked into a slime sleeve right now. Living creatures, like scobies, don't exactly roll 
off an assembly line. They grow over time. In fact, producing a single sheet of SCOBY Packaging 
takes about two weeks.

Mass manufacturing of this stuff is still a ways off.

Instead of a revolution, we might think of it more as an evolution. In the meantime, if you're 
looking to start a revolution of your own, here are a few tips for kicking that plastic habit.















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