Beyond Food: How Mushroom Mycelium Becomes Leather, Packaging, and Buildings

Picture a handbag from Hermès. Now picture it growing in a tray, in the dark, in about a week. No cow. Just mushroom.

That's not a thought experiment. It's real, it's happening now, and it's only the beginning.

The same family of stuff that grows your dinner mushrooms is quietly becoming some of the most exciting materials on the planet. Packaging you bury in the garden. Bricks that built a tower at MoMA. Leather grown in days instead of raised over years.

We make mushroom food for a living, so forgive us for being a little obsessed. Let us show you what fungi can really do.

What is mycelium?

Quick basics, because this is the hero of the whole story. Mycelium is the root system of a mushroom, a dense web of tiny threads called hyphae. Feed it farm scraps and it grows, knitting everything it touches into a solid mass. Dry that mass to stop it, and it holds its shape.

That's the trick in one line: mycelium is a material you grow instead of manufacture. Now watch what people are doing with it.

Mushroom packaging that composts in your backyard

Start with the one you've probably already held without realizing it. Order something fragile online and it likely shipped in a foam cradle. More and more, that cradle is mushroom.

Companies grow mycelium around farm leftovers like hemp and corn husks, and within about a week it sets into a tough protective foam that does everything styrofoam does. The magic is in the ending. Instead of outliving you in a landfill, it's home compostable and breaks down in weeks. You drop it in the garden and it feeds the soil.

And this is not some lab curiosity. IKEA and Dell have both used mushroom packaging to replace plastic foam in their shipping.

Mushroom leather, grown in about a week

Here's the one that stops people mid-scroll. You can grow a material that looks, feels, and ages like leather, with no animal anywhere in the story.

A company called MycoWorks grows theirs on sawdust in a matter of days and calls it Reishi. Hermès has used it in a travel bag, and General Motors has shown it inside a concept car.

We will be honest about the catch, because hype helps no one. Growing this at scale is genuinely hard. Bolt Threads, backed by Stella McCartney and adidas, paused its mushroom leather in 2023 when it couldn't raise the money to scale up. The science works. Making it cheap and everywhere is the mountain still being climbed.

Mushroom bricks, insulation, and actual buildings

Now the one that sounds invented. In the summer of 2014, a courtyard at New York's MoMA held a 12-metre tower built from 10,000 mushroom bricks. It stood for months. Then they composted it.

Mycelium bricks are light, naturally fire-resistant, and leave nothing behind. Their weakness is, fittingly, weakness. They can't carry much load, so the real promise is in insulation and interior panels, where light and biodegradable beats heavy and forever.

Why mycelium is so sustainable

Notice the pattern running through all of this? Every one of these starts with garbage. Sawdust, straw, corn husks, hemp. Stuff headed for the bin becomes the raw material, and the mushroom does the manufacturing itself, in the dark, using almost no energy.

Then, when you're done, it goes back to the earth instead of lasting for centuries. Grown, not made. Gone clean, not gone to landfill. That's why architects, fashion houses, and packaging engineers keep circling back to the same humble organism.

Where we come in

We'll level with you. We don't make mushroom sneakers or mushroom houses. We make mushroom dinner, and we're very good at it.

Our plant-based ground puts oyster mushrooms and pea protein to work on a single mission: tasting like meat. Same remarkable fungus, a much tastier destination.

Take it for a spin in a quick spaghetti bolognese, a smoky chorizo fried rice, or one of these easy weeknight dinners. You can't compost the leftovers into a coffee table. But you can build a pretty great taco.

Mycelium FAQ

What is mycelium?

Mycelium is the root-like network of a fungus, a web of fine threads called hyphae. It's the part that spreads through soil or a log, while the mushroom is the fruit it sends up.

Is mushroom leather real leather?

No. It's a leather alternative grown from mycelium. It can look and feel like animal leather, but no animal is involved.

Is mycelium packaging compostable?

Yes. Mushroom-based packaging is typically home compostable and breaks down in weeks, unlike styrofoam, which can last for centuries.

Can you build a house out of mushrooms?

Sort of. Mycelium works well for insulation and non-load-bearing parts. It's too light to hold up a whole house on its own, but it's a promising low-carbon building material.

The short version

Mycelium, the root network of mushrooms, is being grown into leather, packaging, and building materials, much of it from farm waste, much of it compostable. Fungi are far more versatile than the produce aisle lets on.

We'll happily stick to the delicious end of the spectrum.

Hungry? Stock up with our Big Box, browse the recipes, or find us in a store near you. We're in 250+ stores across Canada.

Want another mushroom rabbit hole? Start with why mushrooms taste meaty.

Sources

• Mushroom Packaging by Ecovative. mushroompackaging.com
• Source Green. Why mycelium is the greenest alternative for styrofoam.
• Fashion Dive. MycoWorks releases details on a new commercial-scale plant. 2024.
• Glossy. Despite slow adoption, mushroom leather isn't dead yet.
• Holcim Foundation. Hy-Fi: biodegradable tower built from mushroom bricks.
• Arup / Ingenia. Building with fungi.