Two British supplies firms, Sages and Osmose, have collaborated to dye sheets of mycelium with pure meals waste, mimicking the looks of tanned leather-based and suggesting a vibrant future for the biomaterial.
Osmose is an organization making a leather-based various from mycelium – the fibrous underground root community of mushrooms – whereas Sages makes pure dyes from meals waste similar to avocado pits, blueberries, crimson cabbages and onion skins, that are usually utilized to textiles.
The 2 consider they’ve achieved a world first with their collaboration, combining two rising areas of sustainable materials growth to color mycelium with out resorting to petroleum-based artificial dyes, thereby conserving the product non-toxic and in a position to biodegrade safely in soil.
“There are many several types of vegan leather-based alternate options to conventional leather-based however the majority of them use both artificial colourations or they use plasticisers, so that they’re non-biodegradable,” mentioned Sages CEO Emily Taylor.
“We wished to discover an possibility the place we may have a totally biodegradable leather-based that has additionally been colored in a biodegradable and sustainable method,” she continued.
Firms that prioritise biodegradability have provided mycelium in its pure shades of white and brown or black, which Osmose CEO Aurelie Fontan says is way simpler to attain naturally.
“I feel the problem for mycelium leather-based was that the providing simply wasn’t there by way of aesthetic,” she mentioned. “While you’re presenting for manufacturers and you are like ‘we are able to solely do brown’, it is a bit of bit boring for them.”
“The color sector is someplace the place you possibly can develop your USP, primarily, which is why working with Sages is so attention-grabbing,” Fontan added.
Osmose and Sages have created tan-coloured mycelium sheets utilizing avocado waste, which Sages sources from an importer and guacamole manufacturing unit in Milton Keynes, the place tens of tonnes of leftover pits and skins are produced every week.
It was a brand new space for each firms, because the meals waste dye takes in another way to mycelium leather-based than it does to the normally cellulose-based textiles that Sages has labored with.
The duo collaborated with supplies science researchers on the UK’s Cranfield College on the undertaking, for which the researchers targeted on learn how to switch and repair the dye to the fabric utilizing “inexperienced chemistry” – an space of chemistry that goals to chop out hazardous substances.
On this case, the researchers sought to switch the formic acid and fluorinated acids which might be typically utilized in tanning to dissolve the polymers of the leather-based so it may be infused with dye. As an alternative, the staff developed a way, which they are saying is considerably much less poisonous.
After working with Cranfield College, Sages and Osmose expanded the experiment and trialled different waste streams similar to blueberries and onion skins to see what colors they might get, producing mycelium swatches in shades of violet and bordeaux.
Taylor and Fontan say they’re attempting to develop a course of for mycelium that’s akin to leather-based tanning, the place each color and sturdiness properties are added in a single or two steps. Their equal, they are saying, can be to dye and waterproof the fabric on the similar time.
Osmose’s focus now could be on creating a water-resistant coating for his or her mycelium that, just like the dye, is bio-based, non-toxic and in a position to biodegrade safely in soil. That is notoriously a problem for plant-based leather-based alternate options, which nearly at all times depend on a protecting artificial coating.
“It is actually arduous to design an answer that matches all supplies, which is principally what everyone seems to be combating,” mentioned Fontan. “Somebody might need pineapple leather-based they usually have their very own coating but it surely doesn’t suggest it may work on mushroom and so forth.”
Not like some firms, nevertheless, Osmose says it doesn’t need to convey a product with a non-biodegradable coating to market.
“If you happen to’re doing a composite, it is not going to biodegrade on the finish of life, which is compromising all the nice work that you have been doing earlier than that step,” Fontan mentioned.
Mycelium is likely one of the hottest rising leather-based alternate options. It has already appeared in luxurious items similar to a bag by Hermes, clothes by Stella McCartney and trainers by Adidas.
