Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes

A practical guide to bioremediation: natural techniques that are proven to heal land damaged by pollution.

In the United States and Canada alone, millions of acres have been contaminated by pesticides, chemicals, dirty energy projects, toxic waste, and other pollutants. Conventional clean-up techniques are expensive and resource-intensive and can cause further damage. Communities find themselves increasingly unable to rely on the same companies and governments that created the problems to step in and provide solutions.

Packed with valuable information from visionaries in the field of bioremediation, Earth Repair empowers individuals to heal contaminated and damaged land. It encompasses everything from remediating and regenerating abandoned city lots for urban farmers and gardeners, to recovering from environmental disasters and industrial catastrophes such as oil spills and nuclear fallout.

This fertile toolbox covers various remediation methods including:

• Microbial remediation: using microorganisms to break down and bind contaminants
• Phytoremediation: using plants to extract, bind, and transform toxins
• Mycoremediation: using fungi to clean up contaminated soil and water

New Audio Segments: The Earth Repair Audiobook includes the following new bonus audio segments that profile current bioremediators and innovative projects:

• Women in Bioremediation: From mycoremediation in the Amazon with Lexie Groper and the Amisacho Project, to catching up with Jess Ann Rubin of MycoEvolve about her project using fungi and plants to filter contaminated agricultural runoff in Vermont, learn about some of the powerful women who are expanding the field and practice of bioremediation at the community level. Interviews also include Olga Tzogas from SmugTown Mushrooms & New Moon Mycology Summit, Nance Klehm of Social Ecologies, and bioremediation artist Kaitlin Bryson.
• Healing from the Ashes: Community Responses to Wildfire: In recent years, fire survivors, mycologists, and impacted communities in California have mobilized bioremediation responses to protect their watersheds from the threat of toxic ash and debris in the aftermath of wildfire. Learn from the Butte Remediation mycoremediation project following the catastrophic 2018 Camp Fire and the CoRenewal wildfire remediation and watershed defense work through their 2020 Post-Fire Biofiltration Initiative.