When Fashion is Fungal

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/08/31/fashion-musrhooms-mycelium-climate/

Source:  By Jessica Wolfrom, The Washington Post. 

Excerpt: Textiles have a big carbon footprint and then clog landfills when discarded. Could biodegradable clothes be a solution? Fungus gets a bad rap. ...The word itself conjures up the notion of mold and decay — the slow ending of something alive. But increasingly, scientists are using mycelium, the threadlike vegetative roots of fungus, to create everything from plastics to packaging materials to plant-based meats, even scaffolding to grow new organs. And now, mycelium is starting to show up in closets as a nature-based material for clothes, shoes and bags slung over shoulders. A new crop of manufacturers are harnessing mycelium to create leather-like materials without the cow. While their products are not yet on the mass market, they’re demonstrating that durable clothing and accessories can be derived from fungi — which is neither plant nor animal — at a lower carbon cost than traditional animal hides or plastics. The fashion industry is the world’s second-most polluting business, behind oil, according to the United Nations. The industry consumes huge quantities of water and produces 10 percent of global carbon emissions — more than all international air travel and maritime shipping combined. Not only does the production of textiles and leather pose environmental problems, so does their disposal. Fast fashion, inexpensive clothes frequently made from oil-based textiles that are designed to be worn briefly, has only compounded the problem. In 1960, Americans tossed 1,710 tons of textiles into landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. By 2017, that amount ballooned to 11,150 tons.... See also New York Times article, That Mushroom Motorcycle Jacket Will Never Go Out of Style [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/science/fungus-leather.html]