What is the problem we are solving?The fashion supply chain is one of the most polluting industries in the world. Leather industry is highly contributing to this environment damage. A rising global middle class means more consumption of bags – and more cows. Presently around 290m cows are killed every year from a global herd approaching 1bn. Projections tell us that in order to keep us in wallets, handbags and shoes, the industry needs to slaughter 430m cows annually by 2025 (Siegle, 2016).
What is our solution?Mycotech develops eco-friendly leather made from fungi mycelium grown in fibrous agricultural waste like sawdust, sugarcane. This mushroom leather disrupt animal and petroleum-based leather by producing a leather without harming any animal, zero nasty chemical treatment and fast growing process (from 3-4 years for growing a cow to 7 days growing a mushroom). The production goals in 2023 is to produce 1 million sqft to serve 0.005% of world leather market, meanwhile we can save 10.6 billion kg of CO2.equal and 30.000 cow as animal hides.Mushroom leather goes head to head with animal leather.These are the advantage of using lab grown leather compared to animal leather
- Affordability, it cost USD 5 per sqm (40% cheaper) Animal Leather Cost USD 9 per sqm
- Chromium content animal leather is using tanning process which caused water pollution. This is the result of waste water chromium content Mylea 0.05 ml/g (600x reduce chromium content) Leather 20
30 ml/g - Tensile performance mushroom leather has similar strength with animal leather, but stronger than synthetic leather. Mushroom leather scored 17 Mpa, Animal Leather scored 20 Mpa, Synthetic Leather scored 2.2 Mpa
- Mimicking calf leather texture. Highly dependent to PU (Poly Urethane) on the surface to create leather looks is the main problem of synthetic leather. Mushroom leather can creates leather texture without using any PU.
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