For environmental protest .. Use of fungi in making textiles and leather products

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The Environmental Action Group, known as the Rebellion on Extinction, is disrupting London Fashion Week to highlight the damage of waste culture. Peace".

These may be new environmental protest methods, but the garment industry is already causing many long-known problems such as high water use, pollution and high carbon footprint, which are known to be environmentally and very socially harmful.

Many solutions to these problems have been proposed such as the concept of "slow fashion", an approach that recommends that we buy high-quality clothes that last longer. Another option is to recommend that we buy less, something that protest groups are encouraged to take part in initiatives to help people and the planet.

Trying to reduce demand for new clothes will certainly be an important part of a more sustainable future, and changing behavior by encouraging consumers to stop buying new things seems more difficult than finding a viable alternative physical solution.

Organic cotton is still harmful to the environment and is often expensive for many consumers.Using electronics and 'smart materials' to make clothing more interactive and attractive is supposed to give them a longer life, but there is little research on how to get rid of these textiles.

So naturally occurring materials provide the best alternatives, such as vegetable starch polyilactic acid and are already used to make biodegradable bags, but they can be developed into textiles.

Collagen tissue, an animal protein and a natural polymer, has been developed into a luxurious leather alternative called ZUA, but the most important experiments in this area are sustainable waste products.

Plant skins
Of particular interest is the growing number of companies producing textile alternatives and mushroom skins for packaging and building materials.

Stella McCartney, for example, is collaborating with Bolt Threades to produce a range of fungal skins called Mello that can be used as accessories. There are many projects and companies working in this field and their outputs are diverse and innovative.

Meceworks also created new types of mixed-use leather produced from fungi that grow on sustainable agricultural products.

Muskin has devised another alternative to the skin made of mushrooms that decompose wood in subtropical forests. At the same time, Ecovativ Design started making an alternative to plastic packaging, but branched out into the creation of skins and foam from fungal yarns.

The company says it uses fungal yarn, which grows in just nine days, to produce "plant leather" in any form or size compared to years to produce animal skins, thereby reducing manufacturing, processing and waste costs from the leather industry.

There are many companies that have tried this technique by using microbes such as "Biocotor", which produced skin made from Scooby cellulosic bacteria used in making kombucha tea, and when this material dries, it looks like a light brown and transparent skin with elastic plastic fabric.

The customers have also developed textile materials from plant waste from a cellulose powder product derived from tubers made by a company in Scotland.

Environmental protest
There are many benefits to the production of textiles from fungi or from bacteria rather than cotton fabrics, because the fungus is inherently abundant, fast-growing on waste, and its growth uses much less water than the traditional textile industry.

The fungal product can be strong, be colored, waterproof, edible, can have medicinal properties, be completely degraded in a natural way, and there are countless other benefits.

Researchers believe that fungi are the future of the industry, and designers and manufacturers are working hard to develop them.Although competition for fungal textiles alternatives to the traditional textile industry is still elusive, progress in this new area can be seen as an act of environmental protest. .