In Australia, a short film about producing fabric from mushrooms has been included in Environmental Film Festival Australia’s programming.
Fashion designer Amanda Morglund, in the film Mycelium Made, describes how to convert waste textiles into biodegradable materials using mushrooms. According to the film, mushrooms are hearty creatures, able to eat most anything.
“You can basically use any mushroom,” Morglund says. “I’m using some really accessible types like oyster mushrooms, which lots of people can buy at the grocery store.”
The mushrooms root binds to waste textile fibers and grows. After a few weeks, the new material can then be dried, leaving behind a fabric like commercial ones.
The resulting textiles are biodegradable, moisture wicking, and self-insulating.
“There’s a great sense of hope around it because it is so accessible. You could pick up rubbish locally and grow your mushrooms on that. Or clean up a beach and use that as your cultivation point,” Morglund says in the film.