Mycelium in Industry, cont.;

Construction, Packaging, Textile, Furniture, +

In this post:

Mycelium in Industry, cont.; –

Construction/Reconstruction/Renovation/Restoration

“The possibilities for what we might use mycelium for are endless,” says Gitartha Kalita, a bioengineer at Assam Engineering College and Assam Don Bosco University in Guwahati, India. He and his colleagues have been using fungi and hay waste to create an alternative to wood for building. “Everything that we now call agricultural waste is actually an incredible resource that mushrooms can grow on. We have already degraded our environment and so if we can, we should replace the current materials with something that is going to hold up in some sustainable way. We can take our waste and turn it into something which is really valuable for us.”

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and……

mycelium-modified wood
Fully Bio-Based Hybrid Composites – Wood, Fungal Mycelium and Cellulose Nanofibrils. Overall, this novel composite system showed good physical and mechanical properties and has potential to replace formaldehyde-based composites.

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and……

smart concrete

Fungi, in combination with traditional building materials create a “smart concrete” that can heal itself as the fungi grows into any cracks that form, secreting fresh calcium carbonate – the key raw material in concrete – to repair the damage.

Highlights

• A new self-healing concept is explored, in which fungi are used fill concrete cracks.•
• An initial screening of different species of fungi has been conducted.•
• Trichoderma reesei was found to be able to grow equally well with or without concrete.•
• Trichoderma reesei can promote the formation and precipitation of CaCO₃.

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Critical Concrete is an emerging educational/social initiative that stands separate from real estate development and promotes new mechanisms to rehabilitate social housing, improve public and cultural spaces shared by low-income communities.
BUILDING and RENOVATING WITH MUSHROOMS
Our aim is to explore natural solutions that could replace conventional materials while being equally efficient, more ecologically responsible and cost competitive. In our latest research we are focusing on the insulation properties of fungal mycelium and developing different kinds of prototypes to test and compare.
MYCELIUM CARDBOARD INSULATION
PRODUCING MYCELIUM INSULATION
As a summary of the knowledge we developed during the 2018 Summer School, this article has two aims :
• Submit a DIY (Do It Yourself) protocole to produce mycelium insulation panels, as we did with cardboard and wool insulation, measuring the technology’s costs, main disadvantages and benefits.
• Define Critical Concrete’s own recipe to produce cheap, performant and ecological mycelium insulation through the bricks experiment.

Mycelium in RE-Construction!

Mycelium in Industry, cont.; – Packaging

The Waste Rush is not as fast a “rush” as the Gold Rush. In a way that is too bad, because the urgency is greater now. But however fast it goes, maybe we should establish Waste Rush winners…of which Ecovative Design, looks like it might be one of the first in the area of Mycelium in Industry.

There’s magic in those mushrooms
In the 1967 film The Graduate, 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, receives a bit of career advice from one of his parents’ friends: “One word: plastics.” >>>In a 2019 remake, that line might well become, “One word: mushrooms.”
….. Meanwhile, Ecovative’s Grow It Yourself (GIY) line, conceived for students, artists and designers, continues to, well, grow. “We never expected it to become so popular,” said Bayer. “We sell an inexpensive bag of material that allows you to produce up to two tonnes of mycelium-based products in your kitchen or garage, and have been surprised to see that some people have used it to start boutique businesses.”

• They have launched a website just for their packaging business, exclusively: https://mushroompackaging.com/
• already considered a Key leader in the Packaging industry Protective Packaging Market 2019 Global Key Leaders Analysis | Sealed Air, Smurfit, Pregis, ACH,IVEX, Unisource, Ecovative Design and others
• continue to investigate all what mycelium can do by experimenting in the vegan meat industry. How Ecovative is making plant-based steaks out of mushroom material – A form of Ecovative’s mycelium: MycoFlex, which is being studied for the cosmetics and faux leather industry, may also have a use in the meat industry – Dozens of startups in recent years have been testing new ways to make plant-based meats. But few companies have found an effective way to make lab-grown steak or chicken, which make up a majority of the $200 billion meat industry

Mycelium in Industry, cont.; – Textile

Another Kickstarter Textile success for Mycelium

The World’s First Mushroom Wooden Watch
April 12, 2019 – 123 backers pledged S$ 27,395 to help bring this project to life.

Mycotech in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, is moving methodically into various industries with their own Mycelium research. They may be another Waste Rush winner….
“We are a rare startup , based on biotechnology research,” said Arekha Bentang, CTO of Mycotech and a graduate of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Biotechnology, West Java.

>>Mycotech has already developed BIOBO a mycelium board composite, which has test results from the Queensland university laboratory in Australia, that BIOBO can withstand fire up to 600 degrees Celsius.
>>They supplied the mycelium production for the MycoTree spatial branching structure
>> and now they are starting to market Mylea.
Faux-leather made from mycelium, that they call mylea.
We created Mylea as an alternative to leather which is such a huge user of energy, polluting chemicals, risk to the health of its labor force and contributor to global warming. “Luxury fashion is spending millions of dollars on environmentally friendly materials,” Adi Reza, CEO of Mycotech, said. Adi and his friends market their mylea to the world from Indonesia, with a marketing office in the UK.

World Alliance for efficient solutions, includes
https://solarimpulse.com/companies/mycotech

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Eight projects to keep an eye on at the Saint-Étienne Design Biennial, where design is a team sport

# 6
Carole Collet, the head of the Design & Living Systems Lab at the Central Saint Martins School in London, explores the potential of fungal mycelium for developing a biodegradable treated fabric surface and finding more sustainable alternatives to the textile industry, which is one of the most polluting in the world. 

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And Aniela Hoitink continues her work in collaboration with fashion designer Karin Vlug  researching how to improve Body-Based modelling for MycoTEX

and MycoTEX shopper – improving the material

Mycelium in Industry, cont.; – Furniture & Architecture

London-based designer Nir Meiri has created a series of table lamps using mushroom mycelium, as an alternative to synthetic materials.
The shades for each of the minimal table lamps are made from mycelium – the vegetative part of a fungus – while more conventional metal forms the stand and base. Each lamp is lit from below by a separate light source, which projects onto the mycelium shade to create a soft, natural glow.

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carlo ratti associati  has unveiled a series of architectural structures made of mushrooms, which has been presented as part of milan design week 2019. the installation, ‘the circular garden’, was grown over the past six weeks — and will be returned to the soil at the end of the month. Each of the four structures includes a sequence of arches, that together comprise one kilometer of mycelium. the project experiments with sustainable structures that can grow organically and then return to nature in a fully circular way.

Mycelium in Industry, cont.; – other areas of Mycelium interest

For those looking to satisfy the scientific/technological aspects of Mycelium for their projects:

Advanced Materials From Fungal Mycelium: Fabrication and Tuning of Physical Properties, January 2017
The fibrous mycelium materials studied in this work can be a realistic alternative to petroleum-based plastics, presenting additional features to some biopolymers produced by bacteria such as bacterial cellulose and P(3HB). Since many developed countries are progressively adopting the use of sustainable materials as a strategy to reduce environmental pollution, these new mycelium-based materials strongly support this strategy. The developed mycelium-materials are natural polymeric composites (chitin, cellulose, proteins, etc.) that require minimum energy for production (self-growing), and their characteristics can be tuned by modifying their nutrient substrates. Hence, this work can pave the way for the controlled self-growth of a variety of functional mycelium-materials in large amounts with low costs.

Thermal Degradation and Fire Properties of Fungal Mycelium and Mycelium – Biomass Composite Materials
We found that Mycelium possesses certain flame-retardant properties (e.g. high char residue and release of water vapour) and could be used as an economical, sustainable and fire-safer alternative to synthetic polymers for binding matrices.

Mycelium in Industry, cont.; – Mycelium in the Food Industry

SUGAR REDUCTION
MycoTechnology’s ClearTaste effectively blocks the perception of bitterness. By blocking the bitterness, the food industry can use less sugar to overcome a negative flavor profile.

PROTEIN
PureTaste is one of the few plant based proteins with a perfect 1.0 PDCAAS score, containing all essential amino acids needed to maintain health. The Next Generation of Plant Based Protein. PureTaste is a breakthrough clean label plant based protein. It is made functionally and nutritionally exceptional through our innovative shiitake mushroom fermentation process.

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Mycelium in Industry, cont.; – What about Oil?

The Petroleum Spill Problem – 2010 – BP oil spill disaster and how myco-remediation and help.

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There are many ways to drawdown and capture CO₂ and one of them is definitely mycelium.

Let’s get all of them going…. Mycelium is already in the soil around you.

have you seen this? 
https://spun.earth
Now it is Official! Mycorrhizal fungal networks are a major global carbon sink. When we destroy this resource, we sabotage our efforts to limit global warming.

Mycorrhizal fungi create complex networks that move carbon from plant roots into the soil. Healthy fungal networks can help us control rising CO2 levels because carbon that enters the soil from fungal networks has a longer residence time compared to other carbon sources, like leaves.

We are on the brink of exhausting Earth’s phosphorus reserves. Mycorrhizal fungal networks can exceed the length of a plant’s roots by as much as 100 times, and have evolved sophisticated ways to find, extract, and transport nutrients – like phosphorus – around ecosystems. When we destroy fungal networks, we lose access to their powerful abilities to forage for nutrients in the soil.

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NYC Passes Bold New Legislation Requiring Green Roofs on New Buildings – and Much More

Requiring Green Roofs on City Buildings
https://council.nyc.gov/press/2019/04/18/1730/
We’ve already seen the revolutionary benefits of green roofs in action. From places like Brooklyn Steel, the Barclays Center, the Javits Center, and the USPS Morgan Processing and Distribution Center. They cool down cities by mitigating Urban Heat Island Effect, cut energy costs, absorb air pollution, reduce storm-water runoff, promote biodiversity, make our cities more livable for all (…..AND drawdown CO2 emissions !!!!! )

Mycelium in Industry, cont.;

All my Mycelium Posts

Additional posts, about Mycelium in Industry:
….all of which starts here:
Mycelium in Industry – Ancient and New

Construction industry,
Packaging industry,
Textile industry,
Furniture industry
Mycelium R&D Projects
Mycelium in Fashion Marketing – One Approach
May 2019 Mycelium in Industry update: Construction, Packaging, Textile, Furniture, +
June 2019 Mycelium Composites? Hands-on – Do it yourself
October 2019 Mycotecture? more-Mycelium in Construction
March 2020 “Mycelium in Industry” Where else can you get information?
March 2020 Mycelium in Construction?…some tangible progress
October 2020 Mycelium Is IN Textile/Fashion – 2020
December 2020 MycoProteins – Mushrooms To Meat?
February 2021 Construction, Mycelium, Industry..Wait A Minute
September 2021 Mycelium Momentum; World Is Waking Up.
January 2022 Myco-Remediation – Decompose And Remedy
July 2023 Mycelium Packaging – How To Make It A Business In 2023

Suppliers

Suppliers of Mycelium Composite Material, around the world:

>>>>Australia:
>Mr. Russell Whittam, www.aussimushroomsupplies.com.au,
I’ve done lots of work with universities the last few years; supplying them with substrate and how to make their own materiel, etc. as well.
I’ve got a new product coming out about mid-2020 – for making things – just add water, spawn and mold the material. Then let it grow. Contact him at: [email protected]

>>>>Egypt: mycelium material This start-up team has patented their own myco-composite material using mushroom strains found in Egypt. They have started to sell bowls, pots and to offer Mycelium packaging. We offer different products in construction such as insulation panels and open to supplying packaging as protective packaging for those seeking eco-friendly alternatives. We are also open to other creative projects using mycelium material. Visit our website: https://mycellium.co/

>>>>Europe:
>Grown.bio – has a license agreement with Ecovative Design.
their new MycoComposite™ kits consist of only LIVING mushroom material and are supplied to the EU countries. Possible also for geographical Europe, but customs clearances must be taken care of by the person making the order.
Grown.bio is now supplying the Mycelium Composite ™ material to insulate buildings. They have insulated class rooms in an Amsterdam school building and in a house in a village near Rotterdam. Scroll down to Building & Architecture products here. They have supplied the MycoComposite™ to many of the projects taking place in Europe, recently, that have been mentioned in my posts. Grown.bio sells other things made from MycoComposite™.

>>>India:
Finally! >Roha.bio At Roha we develop Mycelium bio-composite based protective packaging that can replace Styrofoam using agricultural residue and mushroom mycelium, we do this by collaborating with farmers and self-help groups in the villages, boosting their income.
On other hand we collaborate with startups and brands in consumer electronics space , design and develop protective packaging for their needs. Roha.bio

>>>>Indonesia:
>MYCL, Mycotech Lab has an internship program. It makes a lot of sense to get some controlled experience with mycelium. MYCOTECH Lab produces and sells, mycelium board composite panels BIOBO, and supplied the labor and material for the MycoTree project.

>>>>Malaysia
>Fungitech Mushroom farm waste is always a big problem for mushroom growers all around the world. In our site, we fully utilise this farm waste to make 100% chemical-free and biodegradable mycelium biomaterial. Currently, we mainly supply this green biomaterial for packaging purpose. This patent pending innovative technology is able to solve mushroom farm waste problem and provide a greener life style to our mother Earth.

>>>>The Netherlands – for Large orders in the EU Mycelium Materials Europe (in short
MME) started in 2018. We grow sustainable mycelium materials based on mushroom technology. We produce two types of organic materials in our own mushroom farm: MyFoam® (pure mycelium foam) and HedelComposite Hedelcomposite is composed of sterilized residual sawdust and inoculated with mycelium. Ready to use. Grow your own biodegradable mycelium objects with Hedelcomposite in just one week!  Maximum of 10 bags (300L) per order. 

>>>>New Zealand
> Bio Fab NZ a new company that Ecovative has licensed in New Zealand. “Lesley, We currently work within Australasia so can only ship within New Zealand and Australia. We are looking at having a large scale plant open early to mid 2021 and aim to set up one in Australia soon after. We are planning on selling Grow-it-yourself kits, but not until our plant is up and running.” says James from [email protected]

>>>>UK
> The Magical Mushroom Company a new company/website in the UK. (Ecovative License)..The Magical Mushroom Company is the UK’s first-ever production plant manufacturing mycelium-based packaging. Founded by three friends wanting to make a difference.

>>>>USA:
>Grow-It-Yourself Kits for MycoComposite™ are now available direct from Ecovative’s Grow.bio. Here you will find all instructions, learning, and purchasing information. Grow.bio, however, only ships the MycoComposite™ material within North America.
>Ecovative LLC has transferred all their Mushroom Packaging production equipment to a facility 4x bigger at Paradise Packaging Co which is now handled under the general website: https://mushroompackaging.com. The new company and new website offer you more information about the mushroom packaging material and how it works.

>>>more places around planet Earth?
From Ecovative:
>If you are interested in building a business in MycoComposite technology, Ecovative is now handling partnership discussions from here: https://mushroompackaging.com/pages/licensing-form Licensing with Ecovative allows the partner to explore alternate substrates, techniques, and products.
>For other issues Contact Ecovative Here

ALWAYS
How to join the Circular Economy and other eco-concerns of small business owners are the motive for my blog. Tell me what you are looking for.  Maybe I can help you find it.