Virgin Australia introduces mushrooms grown from coffee grounds

Virgin Australia has partnered with start-up company Fungimental to introduce sustainably produced oyster mushrooms onboard its flights. The mushrooms are grown in used coffee grounds collected from the Virgin Australia Sydney Lounge.

Each week, Fungimental collects 150 kg of coffee waste from the lounge, resulting in 30 kg of gourmet oyster mushrooms. Over a 12-month period, 8000 kg of coffee waste collected from the lounge will produce up to 1600 kg of mushrooms. These will be showcased in a dish designed by Virgin Australia’s resident chef, Luke Mangan.

“Working with the team from Fungimental has been a great experience, and I have been really impressed with the quality of the mushrooms produced,” said Mangan, whose dish ‘roasted chicken breast on corn puree with oyster mushrooms and sundried tomato salsa’ will be featured on the Business Class menu on various flights departing Sydney from 5 October 2016.

“The dish we’ve created with the oyster mushrooms really showcases the mushroom, which has a beautiful robust flavour. These mushrooms truly stand up to the culinary standard onboard Virgin Australia flights.”

Fungimental founder Phillip White said his business will go some way to addressing the 86,100 kg of coffee waste generated by the 1.23 million cups of coffee drunk by Sydneysiders every day. Most of this waste goes to landfill, where the coffee releases methane — which is 22 times worse for global warming than CO₂.

“We’ve been able to complete the circle with Virgin Australia by not only collecting the coffee waste from the lounge, but by having the mushrooms introduced onboard in one of Luke Mangan’s dishes,” said White. “The beauty of these mushrooms is they have 33% more protein than button mushrooms, making them a great alternative to meat.”