When something starts to rot, it usually ends up in the trash. But Joanne Rodriguez wants to turn the concept of rot on its head by growing mushrooms on trash to turn it into something better.
“We are teaching mushrooms to eat garbage and produce renewable, bio-based raw materials,” she told TechCrunch.
Rodriguez is the founder and CEO of Mycocycle, a new start-up that uses fungi, nature’s recyclers, to create plastic-like polymers for a post-fossil fuel economy. Today, almost all plastics are made from oil and gas and, according to the OECD, are responsible for about 3.4% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
“We want to be able to compete with the 3Ms, BASFs and Dows of the world,” Rodriguez said.
This is no small goal. Plastics are seemingly everywhere, from food packaging to building materials. Thanks to this ubiquity, the global plastics industry is worth $624 billion, according to Grand View Research.
Mycocycle hopes not only to capture a portion of this market, but also to realize its circular economy vision by using its mushrooms to literally consume the plastics produced by competitors.
The company has turned to a group of fungi known as white rot fungi. In nature, fungi usually thrive on dead leaves and wood. However, Mycocycle’s mushrooms were chosen for their ability to break down materials produced with oil and gas. The startup uses natural selection to find those best suited for the job, avoiding genetically modifying the strains. “I drew that line pretty early,” Rodriguez said.
Recycled gypsum waste can be used in industrial fillers and foams. Photo credit: Mycoworks
When the fungi get to work, they break down the organic waste matter by penetrating it with their root-like hyphae. Although the hyphae resemble the roots of plants, they are not made of cellulose like the fibers of a plant. Instead, they are made of chitin, the same material that insects use to build their exoskeletons. When these hyphae come into contact with carbon-based molecules, they break them down and use the food source to grow and expand their range.
Rodriguez said Mycocycle’s fungi can work on a variety of wastes, including paper, rubber and nylon. In a recent commercial demonstration, the startup grew its mushrooms on scrap drywall left over from the construction of a meta-data center. The startup shipped one of its bioprocessors to a nearby dumpster company, which shredded the drywall and poured it into the processor along with Mycocycle’s mushrooms. The bioprocessor then maintained the mushrooms’ optimal temperature between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit for about two weeks.
Once a cycle is complete, Mycocycle kills the fungi to ensure they stop growing. “We don’t want mold coming back into our building,” Rodriguez said. The end result is a product that can be sold, not waste that costs money to dispose of.
The resulting material can be used in a range of products including insulation, acoustic panels for soundproofing, and fillers for filling things like concrete. (The recycled material from the Meta Project will likely become fillers, since fungi only eat the paper that covers the drywall, not the plaster it encases.) The fungi don’t eat all of the rubber, but rather encase it in one Network of mycelia. According to Rodriguez, Mycocycle can process everything again when it reaches the end of its life.
Two Mycocycle employees are preparing the company’s mycelium-based treatment. Photo credit: Mycoworks
Mycoycle, which Rodriguez founded in 2018, is currently working on refining its process for recycling rubber crumb, the waste created from old tires. It’s a huge potential market, with the US producing about 280 million each year.
To continue its R&D and commercialization efforts, the company has raised $3.6 million in seed expansion, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by Closed Loop Partners and included investments from Illinois Invent Fund, Telus Pollinator Fund for Good and US Venture.
Mycocycle will generate more than $1 million in sales this year, Rodriguez said. “We will have a positive margin.” The rubber crumb processing side of the business is perhaps the most promising, she added.
“One of the strategic investors in this round is specifically focused on this large-scale rubber market for the exact reason that we have been recycling tires the same way for 40 years,” she said. “They see the risk and they see the opportunity.”