Fast Fashion, Slow Fungi
Words by Alexi Freeman
What have you been doing with your old clothes lately? I’ve been feeding mine to fungi. Steal a glance at my discarded shirt and you’ll discover it’s being devoured, lovingly, by my micro-factory of fungal assistants. All that remains are a few buttons and some full-bellied fungi who just got their fashion fill. Feeding textile waste to fungi may be akin to taking a child to a candy store. The more you give them, the more they want. The pay-off is less textile waste in landfill rather than diabetes.
Over the years as a designer, I’ve thought a lot about the rapidly expanding fashion cemeteries (read: landfill) that garments are buried in at the end of their use phase. Australians are voracious consumers of fashion – we dispose of a whopping 23 kilograms of clothing per person annually. But unless we in the industry start accepting stewardship of the products we design, why should anyone else?
It’s no secret that fashion brands are under increasing scrutiny regarding their poor sustainability records, with many scrambling to claim eco-relevance so that they may capture a slice of the green dollar. But could our seemingly insatiable appetite for consumption be balanced by fungi’s appetite to conshroom (sorry) the textiles we’re discarding? As it happens, mushrooms and their mycelium, the white root-like parts, have been the champi(gn)ons biodegrading dead plant materials for a billion years. It’s high time we gave them a seat at the table.
When we think about technological breakthroughs in waste management, we might imagine diaphanous sci-fi contraptions that zap waste with high-voltage plasma, instantly transforming moth-eaten jeggings into red carpet-worthy couture. While frontier technology undoubtedly plays a critical role in bringing equilibrium to fashion’s life cycle, there may be a role for the humble mushroom in migrating fashion from a linear to a circular economy.
From banishing termite infestations to terraforming Mars, there is an abundance of theories espousing how mushroom technology can positively impact our lives. But have you ever paused midway through your mushroom risotto to consider that our magical friends have evolved the capacity to help tackle one of our fastest growing landfill stowaways?
From left to right: 100% cotton before and after two months with Pleurotus cornucopiae (edible Horn of Plenty mushroom); 100% cotton denim jeans before and after two months with Pleurotus eryngii (King Oyster mushroom); Mixture of 90% cotton and 10% Lycra before and after two months with Ganoderma australis.
These mushy feelings led me to RMIT laboratories, where my experimental collaborator Ann Lawrie and I decided to get the textile-waste-reducing ball rolling by identifying multiple species of fungi that ferociously eat wood. We then began feeding these species nutrient-rich jelly to get them bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Our next step was to collect various types of pure and blended cellulose-based textile waste and sterilise them to reduce the presence of potential contaminants that may out-compete the fungi. Once the fungi had their fill of jelly we refocused them on eating three square meals of textile waste per day and waited, with bated breath, to see if they would take the bait.
After two months at 25 degrees, we observed that certain species of fungi such as basidiomycete loved eating cotton, linen and also regenerated cellulose fabric waste such as rayon (which is also made from wood). While they ate, they broke the structural matrix of the textile, and in doing so, drastically reduced the volume of waste by a whopping 80 percent. Harnessing this capacity could minimise dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, that result from textile waste in landfill. Another prong of the textile waste conundrum is the prevalence of blended textiles. These textiles are far more difficult to recycle than textiles made from a single fibre type. For example, a 100 percent cotton garment (plant-based) is much easier to regenerate back into cotton fibre than a cotton/polyester blend t-shirt. The latter requires extra processing to separate the polyester fibres (petrochemical-based) before regeneration of the individual fibre types can occur.
By munching exclusively on plant-based fibres, fungi are able to separate the non-plant-based fibres which can then be regenerated. Regeneration can take a variety of forms. For instance, a handful of companies, such as Blocktexx, have developed the capacity to process synthetic fibre waste for new textile products. Further, the fungi themselves can be recycled as fertiliser for agriculture and feed back into the loop of growing plant-based fibres such as cotton.
We’re now scaling up these experiments in my design studio (in fact, I just received a fresh delivery of textile waste) and we’re tiptoeing down the path toward setting up a pilot program that could have a real-world impact.
Success in the lab is a crucial first step, but we’re mindful of the potential fissure between experimental and real world results. Nevertheless, we’re optimistic that these discoveries may add incremental pieces to the puzzle of how to address the growing issue of textile waste and help transition fashion away from its current status as one of the dirtiest industries on earth. Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, we can all return to enjoying our clothes without the stress of wondering where they’ll end up once we’ve worn them to death.