These might be the most groundbreaking headphones
of all time.
But not for the reasons you might expect.
We're not talking about audio capabilities
or Bluetooth functionality,
but rather what they're made of.
Fungus,
bacteria,
and yeast.
It turns out,
mushrooms and a whole lot of other microbes
can produce materials that rival plastics and even leather.
And there is a team of scientists
and designers in Finland doing just that.
So, how did they take such
unusual materials
and turn them into something that could seriously
shake up the world of product design?
Nina Pulkkis: The Korvaa project started
actually with frustration.
Narrator: That's Nina Pulkkis.
She's the one who started Korvaa,
this whole headphone project.
Pulkkis: I was filming for a documentary
about microbes and synthetic biology.
But I was really frustrated
because I didn't have very good samples
of what you can actually do with microbes.
Narrator: So she set out on a mission
to see what could be made with them.
She gathered a team of
scientists, researchers,
and designers to make it happen.
Pulkkis: So, first of all, we started to think,
what kind of a product should we make.
Géza Szilvay: There was an idea about making
a pair of headphones.
Narrator: Headphones worked for a couple of reasons.
First, they are an instantly recognizable product.
Everyone has them.
Second, they require lots of leathers
and different kinds of plastics,
and those aren't always sustainable materials.
That's because oil and natural gas are two
of the main raw materials used to make plastics.
And in 2017,
368 million headphones were sold worldwide,
a number that's expected to keep growing.
That means a ton of plastic, leather,
and synthetic leathers, materials that rely heavily
on nonrenewable, nonbiodegradable resources.
Korvaa's process is a little different.
To start out, the headband is made of bioplastic.
To make that bioplastic, the team uses
plain old baker's yeast.
Through chemical processes, they turn that yeast
into a bioplastic substance.
That substance gets 3D-printed and hardened.
Next, the cushioned ear cups.
These are made from fungal proteins
and other plant-based materials grown in the lab.
Those materials get injected right into this mold.
And when they're dry, they look and feel just like foam.
Szilvay: Then the ear-cup covers are made
from fungal, leatherlike material.
It's made of mycelium.
One could think of it as root structure of mushrooms.
Merja Penttilä: Fungi grow in so-called
hyphal filamentous forms,
so they form long, long stretches.
So the material, in a way, grows itself.
Narrator: And those long stretches of roots
will take the shape of whatever you encourage them to.
The result?
Something similar to leather.
To make the inner mesh part,
the team created synthetic spider silk.
Spider silk is superstrong, lightweight, and elastic.
But spiders can't spin enough of it.
So they make silk in the lab,
without harming any eight-legged creatures.
By electro-spinning that silky material onto a flat surface,
they create a mesh material.
Then, all those parts get pieced together
to form a one-of-a-kind headset.
Manuel Arias Barrantes: I think people
have this perception
that fungi is something, like,
dangerous or, like, gross,
because it grows on food
also, that it's rotten.
But I think this is slowly changing as more
designers and companies are developing
materials from natural sources.
Saku Sysiö: For a lot of the
materials, we didn't know how to use them
and how to make them work in this project.
So that made it quite challenging and interesting.
Pulkkis: So it's really exciting to see
how this kind of small project grew
into something really much, much bigger
just by teaming up all kinds of different people
with different competencies
and completely different backgrounds.
Narrator: That team plans to commercialize
these unique materials so they can be used
in all sorts of products.
Would you wear these fungus headphones?