Narrator: The world is witnessing a shroom boom.
There are 10,000 varieties of mushrooms on planet Earth.
And we’re still discovering new ways to grow them
for food and medicine.
Mushrooms can remove pollution from soil.
Some can be used to replace plastic.
Others can be used to digest it.
Eben: What are fungi? Are they aliens?
Can they help us?
Narrator: Since 2017, the global market
for mushrooms has grown 30% to $50 billion.
Now, inventors around the globe are turning mushrooms
into bacon, packaging material, and even coffins.
We looked at four different businesses building a more
sustainable future out of fungi.
It looks like a giant marshmallow,
but it's actually a mushroom.
Slice it and you get crispy vegan bacon
or a convincing alternative to leather.
And this lab grows an eco-friendly replacement
to polystyrene foam,
that light but bulky material taking
up a third of the space in all landfills.
But can this company grow it fast enough
to make a global impact?
We visited Ecovative's headquarters
in Green Island, New York, to find out.
The magic is in mycelium,
the living root structures of mushrooms.
Eben: Our entire philosophy is actually based around this idea that nature provides.
Mycelium is a great solution to both the plastics waste problem
we face, as well as animal agriculture.
Alex: I'm taking the mushroom mycelium,
and then I'm just going to section this Petri dish.
Narrator: All Ecovative products
start with these natural building blocks.
We have about 100 different strains in-house,
and we will analyze those
for the different material properties that they have.
Workers: What do you think about the wall thickness on this?
That's pretty thin.
Narrator: The company's best selling product
is called MycoComposite.
It has similar properties to packaging foam,
but it's completely biodegradable.
We've worked with a variety of companies,
some of them huge companies like Dell computers,
where they've used our earth-friendly packaging
to ship servers.
We've worked also
with small New York startup brands like Keap Candles.
Narrator: Manufacturers design molds
using large recyclable plastic sheets.
Heat makes the sheets pliable
so they can be shaped around any product.
They start with wood chips, corn husks, or hemp,
then sprinkle in some fungal spores and add water.
Pack the mixture into the molds,
and the mycelium starts to grow,
feeding on the shredded agricultural waste.
Just over a week later,
the form-fitted mold is ready to ship.
Worker: So this jar, and it fits really nice in there.
Ecovative has a different process
to make vegan meat and leather,
which it claims consumes far fewer resources
than the real thing.
Alex: And then we're going to take this substrate,
which will inoculate this sawdust.
Narrator: Workers still start
with agricultural waste and spores,
but these mixtures are placed in vertical farms,
growth chambers that mimic the conditions of natural soil.
Andy: And so what it's really trying to do is grow up
and punch out through the earth to form a mushroom.
But we keep the environment such that it just grows
and grows into this large, marshmallow-like structure.
Narrator: That marshmallow is called aerial mycelium,
and it grows over the course of about 10 days.
We've just changed their shape from a mushroom
to a slab that's 100 feet long and 4 feet wide.
Narrator: Ecovative can produce
up to 3 million pounds of mycelium per year.
In 2018, the company licensed its leather process
to Bolt Threads.
They make Mylo,
a leather alternative that has been used
in clothing and handbags.
The company also has a line
of mushroom-based meat alternatives
called MyForest Foods.
The "My" is short for mycelium.
The first product is called MyBacon,
and it's made from aerial mycelium
that's cut into slices,
compressed, and seasoned.
Andy: It fries up and gets crispy just like bacon,
and tastes pretty amazing, too.
Narrator: We can't confirm the flavor,
but MyBacon is definitely a healthier option.
It's high in fiber and has the same protein content
as a regular slice of pork bacon,
with one-fifth the fat.
The company projects that as it scales up,
MyBacon can eventually be grown for $1 per pound,
The market price of pork bacon is nearly 7 times that.
And it takes nearly 600 gallons of water
to produce 1 pound of pork,
but just over 1 gallon of water
to grow a pound of mycelium bacon.
The market for meat substitutes
was worth almost $8 billion in 2022,
and it's set to nearly double over the next five years.
Mycelium protein can mimic whole cuts of meat,
as opposed to most other plant-based alternatives,
that come in the form of minced patties or sausages.
MyBacon is available in
over 40 stores in the northeastern United States.
The company hopes to expand
to a few hundred stores by the end of 2023.
Right now, it's a matter
of scaling up to fulfill bigger purchase orders.
In 2022, the company built the world's largest
commercial mycelium farm in Green Island, New York.
If the CEO has his way,
that will be the last one they ever need.
Eben: We never want to build another mushroom farm.
We want to go to mushroom farmers and say,
"Hey, we have a better crop for you.
We can pay you a higher price per pound,
and you can turn your rooms faster."
Narrator: And they're still looking for new ways
to use mycelium,
like replacing the plastic hidden in your clothing.
Ecovative has partnered with Ecco Leather,
a sustainable leather tannery, to make products like these.
So this is what our mycelium looks like
when it's harvested.
And this is just untreated, totally pure mycelium.
It's soft, it's squishy, feels great on your face.
We're finding there's lots
of customers that would like to use this in sneakers,
in bra cups, and in bags
as a plastic replacement.
Narrator: For now, Ecovative Design
is a long way from displacing meat and plastics,
but Evan says his company is finally
in a position to properly scale its work.
I've been working 17 years to get to this point,
and, like, now the rubber meets the road.
Narrator: Across the pond,
several companies grow food using garbage.
These oyster mushrooms go from cellar
to table in about two months.
They grow fast in used coffee grounds,
a rich source of carbon and nitrogen.
Narrator: A Belgian company called PermaFungi
found a way to give coffee grounds a second life.
Narrator: Instead of letting grounds
wind up in a landfill,
Julien's team collects them,
uses them to grow mushrooms,
and then sells the mushrooms to local shops and restaurants.
And now they're using wood waste
and mushroom spores to make insulation panels.
Workers from PermaFungi head out
by bike to pick up excess coffee grounds
from coffee shops around their city.
Narrator: The grounds are brought back
to the underground growing facility.
They're mixed with other ingredients inside this giant drum.
Narrator: Then they're packaged into bags with straw
to create a nutritious soil for the mushroom spores.
Narrator: After about two weeks in a dark, damp room,
the bags are brought
to a brighter space, where the mushrooms begin to sprout.
Mushrooms are some
of the fastest-growing foods on the planet.
They don't require sunlight to grow,
just a substrate and moisture.
PermaFungi has been using coffee grounds since 2013.
Up to 2,000 kilograms of mushrooms grow here every month.
Once they're harvested,
the team delivers the mushrooms to local restaurants.
It's a circular process
in which by-products are reused rather than wasted.
PermaFungi's operation has global potential.
Every year, coffee drinkers around the world generate about
18 million metric tons of used grounds every year.
The company recycles about 20 of those tons.
It's also figured out a way to make biodegradable insulation
and packing material.
When we grow mushroom, at the end of the production,
we do produce a lot of organic waste.
And the idea with this new line of production
was to reuse our own waste.
Narrator: Across the border in Paris,
one Michelin-starred chef is also repurposing used grounds.
Narrator: Simone Zanoni gets his mushrooms
from La Boite a Champignons,
a local startup that recycles coffee grounds
and wooden packaging.
Narrator: On a typical day,
the company collects about 2,000 kilograms
of grounds from offices around Paris,
including the upper house of the French Parliament.
The mushrooms are available in restaurants
and a few major supermarket chains.
The company also sells grow-your-own mushroom kits online.
For Arnaud, this system is a return to old practices.
Narrator: For PermaFungi,
it's all about reestablishing natural cycles.
Narrator: This coffin is alive.
It's made from mushrooms that soak up the toxins
human bodies leave behind.
And it eliminates the need for massive amounts of wood,
steel, and concrete used to bury the dead.
Funerals in the US use enough
of these materials every year to build a tower of caskets
the size of the Empire State Building.
The Loop coffin grows in a lab
in seven days
and absorbs into the soil in under two months.
But can it replace traditional burials?
We visited the creator
of the world's first mushroom coffin to find out.
This is definitely my baby, yes.
I think about it when I wake up.
I think about it when I go to sleep.
Yeah, I see them.
We got some friends.
Narrator: Bob Hendrix searches for the building blocks
for a Loop coffin in Delftse Hout forest in the Netherlands.
Bob: It's easy to find mushrooms,
but it's hard to find the specific one you need.
Some are edible,
but some might kill you as well.
Narrator: He harvests samples
to bring back to the lab every weekend.
Bob: And this is not the one we use,
but we we could make a coffin out of it.
We can try.
This one might be the holy grail.
Here you can see all the wires.
So it's almost like veins of the organism.
Narrator: It's mycelium,
thin white fibers that grow easily
on all kinds of surfaces.
Mycelium is the root structure of mushrooms,
and simply said,
they're just the recyclers of nature.
So everything that turns into death,
they turn it into life.
Narrator: It feeds onto decaying
plants and animals,
expanding at a rate of half an inch per day.
From this little piece of mycelium,
we can grow a living coffin.
Producer: Really?
Yeah.
Narrator: Back at Loop's headquarters,
Bob and his team mix the mycelium with wet sawdust
and spray it with a secret sauce that helps it grow.
Then they seal it in a plastic mold shaped like a coffin.
This part of the process is also a secret.
Fungus fills in the empty space,
and it dries within a week.
It's a building technique that Bob has been experimenting
with for years.
Right now, we tend to work
with dead materials, while I envision a world
in which we work together with organisms.
Narrator: The final product is light but sturdy.
Bob: It's almost like a sort of styrofoam material.
So it's really rigid, yet it's super lightweight.
Narrator: It can carry up to 440 pounds.
Each coffin is lined with a layer
of moss sourced from a local farm.
Bob: The moss has two functions.
It helps to decompose the body faster
and enrich in biodiversity.
And the other one is to give humans the experience
of becoming part of the cycle of life.
Narrator: A body interned in a Loop coffin
should not be embalmed
or wear any synthetic materials
so it can transform into soil faster.
Narrator: Most people's deaths
leave a much larger footprint.
A conventionally buried body contains a mix
of over 200 chemicals,
from tobacco residues to dry-cleaning chemicals, pesticides,
heavy metals, and embalming fluids.
It can take up to 12 years
for an embalmed body to turn into a skeleton.
But soft tissues release toxic chemicals
and microbes after only a few months.
And traditional coffins contain preservatives, paint,
and have metal handles.
All of these substances can leach into soil and water,
making it unhealthy for the living.
Loop coffins can fix this because
of a process called mycoremediation.
That means that mushrooms will chow
down on almost anything, even pollution.
This fungi, of course, can have a lot
of intake of heavy metals
and all kind of chemical components,
because they store it in their ether,
in the fungus body.
Narrator: But breaking old habits
can be difficult.
Replacing bodily fluids with preservatives started
during the American Civil War.
The bodies of fallen soldiers
needed to be transported long distances for burial.
Embalming made it possible
for President Lincoln's open casket to remain on display
for a three-week train trip from Washington to Illinois.
And it has been standard practice ever since.
Bob wants people to return
to the natural practices that existed for most of history.
Bob: As humans, why are we not part of the cycle?
We can actually enable people
to feed the earth instead of pollute it.
Narrator: Loop's off to a modest start.
But globally, green funerals are becoming more popular.
Frank: People are really interested in new things
in the funeral business,
and our members are asking
if they can use the Loop coffin for their burial.
Narrator: Today, they make up
a small proportion of overall funerals.
But two in three American consumers say they'd
consider a green burial.
And they have a growing list
of over 300 providers to choose from.
Given enough time, we all return to dust.
But Bob Hendrix hopes we'll choose instead
to become compost.
Mushrooms are definitely having a moment.
But we might only be getting a glimpse of our fungal future.
Eben: I would say there's like a gold rush going on,
in terms of folks getting into the mycelium sector.
Reminds me a little bit of, like, the Industrial Revolution
in the 1900s, because like everyone's trying all
these different approaches to solve the same problems.
Narrator: Hi, this is Daniel Allen
from the Worldwide Waste team.
We want to bring you more stories that take a look at garbage
and the creative ways that people deal with it.
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