Beef or Mushrooms?

When thinking about leather, cows, controversy, and chemicals probably come to mind, but not lab coats, mushrooms, and petri dishes. However, there is a recent development in the fashion world: lab-grown leather derived from fungi.

Five years ago, American companies ‘MycoWorks’ and ‘Ecovative Design’ began researching the potential of fungi as a leather alternative and found that when the spores are grown on sawdust or agricultural waste, the roots form a solid ‘mat’ that can be treated to resemble leather. The scientists took advantage of the roots’ rapid growth and the properties of mushrooms- that they absorb carbon like plants do, they can grow almost anywhere, and they don’t require any intervention to grow. This is a stark contrast to animals like cattle that are more commonly used for leather, as they produce large amounts of greenhouse gases, take up a lot of land, and require a lot of care. The result of the lab experiments was a fully biodegradable leather imitation that has the same durability and aesthetics as standard leathers, but only takes weeks to develop, compared to the years it takes cows to be bred and grown to maturity.

The topic of animal leather has always been a sensitive debate. For some, using animal skins for clothing and accessories is a barbaric practice, that also contributes to farming’s greenhouse gas emissions and should be stopped. Others argue leather is a by-product of the food industry, so using it is actually helping the environment by utilising a waste material that would otherwise be incinerated. Wherever you stand in the debate, it cannot be denied that animal leather has terrible environmental effects. The sad truth is that plant-based alternatives that have slowly begun to emerge on the market, like cork leather and Piñatex (from pineapple leaves), also have severe environmental issues. Extremely high quantities of water are often involved in agriculture and the deforestation required to create space for these crops to grow can be devastating to plants that naturally grow in these spaces.

The mushroom alternatives however seem to have none of these issues- is it possible the fashion industry has finally found a replacement to a popular but harmful material, and its first fully sustainable fabric?

TEGAN COOKE