these “forever chemicals” never disappear, never go away, and are toxic to personal and planetary health. in 2022 alone, 72 million tonnes of synthetic materials were produced and put into clothing, according to textile exchange’s preferred fiber and materials market report. most people have no idea they are walking around in glorified plastic bags. it is not a matter of if we can change, but if we will and the answer appears to be under our feet. welcome to plastic rehab, we’ve been waiting for you. 

can fungi replace leather?

mycelium, the root structure of fungi and what mycologist paul stamets calls “the earth’s natural internet,” is just starting to be harnessed to create climate and environmental solutions to many problems. mycelium weave magnificent webs, interlinking nature, allowing different life forms to communicate. now they are branching out to the fashion industry to open our eyes, co-creating with people to show that another regenerative materials future is possible. 

currently leather is predominantly made from animal skins or synthetic materials, with a few other plant-based concoctions entering the arena. cow leather is a byproduct of the animal agriculture industry, so fashion is completely dependent on the production of beef for hides to make leather. vegan, bio, and faux leather are just some of the aliases plastic goes by these days to hook new victims.

artisans used to sustainably use hides to make leather through vegetable tanning. it was a tedious process as tanning could take weeks. so what had been a specialized craft, has now been overrun by chromium tanning which is much faster and cheaper. but it suffuses the world with chromium sulfate. this allows the fashion industry to make cookie cutter products as speed and cost reductions are prioritized, leaving people and the planet to pay the true cost. this fuels a system driven around cheap fast goods, ignoring the natural systems we operate within that replenish resources intuitively but cannot keep up with over extraction.

staging a grassroots revolution, mycelium is here to dethrone the plastic and animal leather kings. mycelium can do something plastics cannot, biodegrade seamlessly back into the ground as food, not poison.  

unraveling and upending the current system, the use of mycelium could also reduce consumption of land and water. designers can direct their creativity to choosing love, choosing life, and choosing wisely. treating the fungi kingdom as our new partners, we don’t have to limit designs to just a replacement trying to replicate the old regime. mycelium materials don’t have to conform to old shapes because they can take on so much more, it just needs to be imagined.

as companies like mycoworks are developing faux-leather handbags made out of mycelia, mushrooms are having their “she’s all that” makeover moment and being valued for what’s on the inside even while they make their way down the catwalk. the fashion industry is having a spiritual awakening from a shroom trip and is being offered a second chance by the fantastic fungi giving them a circular means of existence. 

adapting to any circumstance, from paris haute couture, hats as soft as butter, avant-garde stools, and even a lamp that begs the question, how many people does it take to change a light bulb housed in a cylinder of mycelium? the possibilities are endless. 

cultivating a symbiotic future

these mycelium-based creations are all fascinating, but since the climate and environmental crisis keeps me up at night, what gets me up in the morning are the innovations that could scale and replace synthetics. from packaging to leather, mycelium is malleable, moldable, and abundant. the diversity of possibility in what has been and could be made from fungi exemplifies the expansiveness of the human imagination. 

merlin sheldrake, ph.d., biologist and author of entangled life, encouraged people to “think about these relationships as symbiotic relationships not as fungal technologies.” fungi are resilient, enigmatic, and unflappable. human created technology is incredible, but we must not forget that the true power is the natural resource itself and that humans are not in complete control over it. 

sheldrake further reflects on the history of life on the planet and expresses that often unlikely partnerships form because, “they came together in times of crisis because together they could do something that neither could do apart.” together they just might be able to transform the fashion industry into a regenerative and circular system to create a more ethical world. once you choose possibility, life opens up to you.

plastic waste is an ever-expanding problem, with approximately 380 million metric tons of new plastic added to the world every year. but what if there was an alternative material that could replace petroleum-based plastics? there is one possibility: mycelium, the white, root-like structure that grows beneath mushrooms.

mycelium collects, stores and sends information to other plants and trees via its branching networks under the forest floor. it performs a network function, not unlike the internet, “an underground information highway that speeds up interactions between plants,” said zhao qin, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at syracuse university.

“mycelium consists of massive branching thread-like hyphae, which is stretched and split into substrates,” mycologist ajay singh writes in his paper, “development of sustainable myco-material from fungi.”

mycelium has a physical structure that gives it strength and durability that can replace single-use plastic packaging. that means it could be part of the solution to some of the world’s most pressing problems.

the united states alone creates more than 35 million tons of plastic in a year, according to the environmental protection agency. only an estimated 5% to 6% percent of plastic waste in the united states is recycled; the rest is sent to landfills or incinerated.

faced with a broken recycling system, some companies are making alternatives to petroleum-based plastics, creating products that are biodegradable or compostable.

ecovative tapped into the mycelium market—or myco-material market—over a decade ago. its core product is a replacement for single-use plastic such as styrofoam, commonly used in shipping and packaging products.

“we’re growing full sheets of mushroom tissue, which end up being the mushroom packing,” said ecovative chief marketing officer andy bass. “the mycelium packaging can be thrown in your garden and then decompose in 45 days.”

mycelium grows and thrives on agricultural waste by-product such as wood chips or decaying tree branches, shrinking agriculture waste streams.

“ecovative grows its mushroom on corn stalk, hemp hurd, and wood chips,” bass said.

like fungi on the forest floor, mycelium likes dark and damp growing conditions. humidity above 98% and temperatures between 24 and 25 degrees celsius (75 to 77 degrees fahrenheit) are ideal, says qin.

when mycelium grows on waste, the structure grows out and down. the hemp hurd substrate and mycelium are mixed in molds to form large sheets.

in addition to tackling the compounding issues of plastic pollution and agriculture waste, ecovative is also using mycelium to make meat alternatives. mycelium-based meat is the latest myco-market the company hopes to capitalize on. “we just cut the ribbon on our largest farm to date,” bass said.

in this case, ecovative’s “growth chamber” mimics this vertical mushroom farm, growing “in an aerial style,” said lacey davidson, ecovative’s marketing director. ecovative declined to show videos of its growth chamber out of concerns for their intellectual property.

“it looks like a dutch-style mushroom farm,” davidson said. “we have reconfigured this model to grow mycelium instead of mushrooms. instead of mushrooms popping up it looks more like one giant interconnected fluffy marshmallow growing a few inches above its feedstock.”

the 78,000-square-foot vertical farm in upstate new york can grow 3 million pounds of fungus-based meats per year. “we will be able to replace up to 1 million pounds of bacon,” bass said. as of july, 2022, mybacon is available in three health food stores, but the company has ambitious plans for expansion.

substituting plant-based alternatives for meat and other animal products can dramatically reduce society’s carbon footprint, mitigate climate change and improve human health, according to the latest findings from the united nations’ intergovernmental panel on climate change.

meanwhile, in the netherlands, innovators are focusing their myco-attention on furniture and building insulation. “mycelium-based foam and sandwich composites have been actively developed for construction structures,” qin said.

while these ancillary household goods do not pose the same threat to climate and the environment as plastic packaging or animal agriculture, the toxins commonly found in common construction materials do pose a risk to human health and do not exist within a closed-loop system, eventually ending up in landfills.

“even if eps [expanded polystyrene, commonly used for insulation] is disposed of correctly, it can take thousands of years to degrade, evidently making it extremely difficult to properly contain,” writes owen robertson in a report, “fungal future,” for the technical university of denmark. “this has resulted in bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals in food webs across the planet.”

ecovative’s licensed partner in the netherlands, grown bio, is working on a bio-composite, mycelium-based insulation product to replace expanded polystyrene.

the last hurdle to market success is convincing buyers that mycelium-based products are just as durable and reliable as plastic. “proving that these new bio-based materials have the same performance characteristics as the traditional materials is a challenge,” bass said.