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From soup to pizza, from that moldy bread in the back of your cupboard to shrieking zombies hell-bent on infecting survivors on TV, mushrooms are a constant presence in our daily lives. But aside from these much-appreciated culinary treats and entertainment, mushrooms can actually play a more significant role in our future.
In his book Mycelium Running, renowned mycologist Paul Stamets wrote that “mushrooms can save the world” – a mantra that Bandung-based Mycotech Lab (MYCL) has taken to heart.
Founded in 2015, MYCL is an Indonesian biotechnology company that specializes in mushroom products, particularly mycelium-based creations.
Initially, the company sold do-it-yourself mushroom kits known as grow boxes, but inspiration struck when MYCL were looking at the creation process of tempeh, a much-loved Indonesian staple that uses a Rhizopus fungi in its fermentation.
This jolt of inspiration prompted the team to begin experimenting with mushrooms, where they discovered the uniquely resilient properties of mycelium, setting them on the path to become the innovators they are today.
Since most people are familiar with the mushrooms served on their dining tables, the question is, how can they become more than just an entrée?
Durable but biodegradable
Sitting down with The Jakarta Post in a recent interview, Ronaldiaz Hartantyo, MYCL’s chief of innovation officer, said one of the greatest aspects of using mushroom as a material is that it is organic and fully bio-based, which leverages massive potential for significant sustainability, social and economical impacts.
“Our MYCL Composite for example, is carbon negative, as it uses agricultural waste so it actually absorbs carbon instead of just being carbon neutral,” he added.
Hartantyo noted that as Indonesia is an agricultural country, there was an immense amount of agricultural waste that could be repurposed for mycelium-based products, adding that only 2 to 5 percent of Indonesia’s total cellulosic-based agricultural waste was decomposed or processed again annually. This leaves the remaining 95-98 percent to be disposed of by way of open-dumping or burning, producing more carbon that could have been repurposed.
Currently, MYCL offers three separate products providing different functionalities; MYCL Composite, a biodegradable solid-composite material made from mycelium; the BIOBO sustainable non-adhesive bio binder board and the Mylea leather-like material, which is also made from mycelium.
Compared with conventional products, MYCL’s offerings leave a significantly more positive environmental footprint. Mylea, for instance, is durable but biodegradable, and MYCL hopes the company can help reduce pollution from the fashion industry with this material.
“Our Mylea leather, if it's shaped into large sheets for use in clothing, for example, won't biodegrade and is very resilient! But when it reaches the end of its life cycle, we can cut it up into small pieces and it will degrade naturally, making it compostable at home.”
In contrast to traditional leather, Mylea is claimed to use 70 percent less water in its production process, and Hartantyo noted, leather is a by-product of the livestock industry, where the production of leather consumes 30 percent of the world’s landmass.
“For us, we don’t need this much space or consumption. Mushrooms don’t need to be fed, we can do vertical farming and we don’t even need soil to create our products,” he added.
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From fashion to disaster relief
While the fashion industry has been in a love affair with leather, it seems that times are changing, and the trends are cycling.
Just recently, Mylea was featured in the 2024 and 2023 Paris Fashion Week through its collaboration with Japanese fashion label Doublet, highlighting traditional leather jacket silhouettes made, well, more mushroom-y.
Other mushroom-based creations include bags, furniture and home decor, most notably the Shrüm Stool, in collaboration with ōd architecture studio.
Outside of the trends, Hartantyo is optimistic that MYCL can branch out to construction with MYCL Composite and BIOBO, claiming that the latter can practically replace MDF or plywood, including for walls, floors and parquet.
“What we’re really excited about is the use of our products in temporary construction. Because our material is both durable and biodegradable, we can for example construct pavilions for exhibitions, then by the end of the event we can collaborate with local farmers to utilize the construction material as compost, creating a sustainable closed loop,” he explained.
More than exhibition spaces though, MYCL’s materials can also be used for disaster relief purposes or preemptive safety measures such as temporary housing thanks to its high strength to weight ratio and integrity.
“If you press on it, it's quite soft, so it won’t hurt people if it falls.”
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No quality compromise
With MYCL now reaching its first decade of operations, Hartantyo reflected on the Indonesian market’s changing perception and renewed interest toward sustainable products. In the past, he conceded that marketing and promoting their offerings was one of the biggest hurdles, as people used to think that sustainability came with compromises to quality.
“Now, that stigma has faded and we have people desiring our product to genuinely support sustainability. What we need to focus on now is affordability, and to expand our operations so that we can reach economies of scale and make our products much more accessible for Indonesians.”
As the interview drew to an end, Hartantyo was optimistic for the future and MYCL’s prospects and achievements down the road.
“Our values are very similar to mycelium itself: we connect. For MYCL to grow and really leave an impact, we need help from designers, architects and builders to explore how far this material can go. We believe that as innovators, we’ve only scratched the surface,” he said.
“This is still very early on in the journey of discovering what mycelium can do. That's why we're so happy to collaborate, because we believe that we can’t do anything meaningful by ourselves.”
It might sound silly, but with the work that Mycotech Lab is doing, perhaps mushrooms really could save the world instead of zombifying us all.
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