There are two traditional ways to make a leather jacket. Contains a cow, and takes years. The second includes synthetic fabric, and requires plastic. But there is a third option: thick sheets of woven fungus, grown on anything from sawdust to agricultural waste in a few weeks.
“It looks a little and smells a bit like a mushroom, still, but it looks like a piece of old leather jacket,” said Alexander Bismarck, a material scientist at the University of Vienna.
Over the past decade, companies in the United States, Indonesia, and Korea have tried fungal leather as an ethical and environmentally sustainable replacement for both cow skin and plastic. Previously, no further research was done to support their claims. But a study published last week in Nature Sustainability by Dr. Bismarck Bismarck and colleagues found that fungal leathers stack fairly well when it comes to versatility and durability.
Wearing fungal leather does not mean wearing a mushroom motorcycle jacket. Instead it is made up of a mat of mycelium, the underlying thread-like core networks from which the fruit roses fall up after rain. These mesial mats grow easily on just about any organic material.
From the early 1950s, inventors began filing patents around fungal mats as a range of paper, Ghanaian dressings and other products, but they were never fully captured, said Michelle Joan, lead author and materials scientist at the University of Vienna. Technology.
But in the last decade, companies like Mico Works and Bolt Threads have started producing and selling fungal leather products.
“With the help of leather, you are limited to the skin that the animal produces on its life, while mycelial mats are grown in specifications, ”said Sophia Wang, co-founder of Myco Works.
Dr. Bismarck said the potential for custom materials is huge because different types of fungi have different properties, such as hardness, water resistance, and millions of species to choose from.
Fungal leather is also potentially more durable than other leather sources. The earning process is energy intensive and produces little bit of mud waste – and the production of synthetic leather requires plastics, including oil. Dr. “You’re getting organic organisms to do all your manufacturing for you, so there’s no real need for energy,” Jones said.
“It doesn’t need light. And once you get this stuff, you can process it according to a fairly simple chemical treatment compared to what you normally do for leather earnings. “
But while fungal leather has performed fairly well in the team’s durability tests, there are still some questions about its long-term hardness.
“Early industry results suggest that durability is fairly good compared to animal leather,” but some industries cheat a bit because they incorporate a thicker polyester and make it into composite leather. “
The fungal leather industry is still in its infancy, and is largely generating evidence of imagination for the luxury market: bolt thread fungal leather handbags sold for about $ 400 when available, similar to a good quality leather bag.
But Dr. Jones believes the industry is likely to see a reduction in rising costs. “There are already a large number of mushroom cultivation industries that produce all kinds of mushrooms for the culinary market. The technology of mass production of mushrooms is already there.”
Fungal leather products can pop up everywhere as quickly as mushrooms after rain. The question is whether consumers feel the magic. After all, if you regret those fungal leather pants in the future, can you just throw them in the yard and let them become compost?
Dr. Bismarck said, “It’s not all discovered yet.
