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Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

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Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#111

Post by dnautics »

Barbing wrote: post #85
foobiekr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always a risk of things like this. For example, to make my winecap bed, I had to get a bunch of woodchips. There is no way woodchips that one will buy in bulk are not contaminated with the spores of other wood-eating fungus. What you learn is how to positively identify the mushrooms you intend to produce/eat. It doesn't take long. I've only had alien mushrooms show up once.

Do people ever try to irradiate or fumigate or however they’d treat the woodchips? Maybe it would cost 10 times as much as the wood chips themselves… small batch spore bakeoffs…

you could probably autoclave it with a standard dental/tattooing autoclave (~500 USD and requires a gas stove)

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#112

Post by nine_k »

Reason077 wrote: post #105
kepano wrote: post #43

There are a few companies in this space, notably Ecovative, who have been trying to make mycelium-based packaging for almost two decades. The problem is that it takes around 7 days for each piece of packaging to "grow", and the finished part is heavy and not compressible so it adds significant cost in manufacturing, storage and transit. And these costs don't get any better with scale. For those reasons, mycelium pack…

Biodegradable foam packaging, as well has food containers, disposable cutlery, etc, has also been made from corn starch for decades. I’m curious what the advantage of mycelium packaging is over these existing materials. Presumably, it’s not cheaper to produce? Is it mainly that the mycelium degrades faster and can be recycled more easily in home composting, etc? Or is this about creating “hard” plastic-like packaging…

Theoretically fungi can live off sawdust, don't need plenty of light or watering, etc, so they should be less expensive than corn.

OTOH corn is highly optimized over centuries of breeding, harvesting, and processing. Fungi, not nearly so, so by now they may be more expensive.

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#113

Post by bdamm »

Barbing wrote: post #87
Tepix wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavy? Two packages made from mycelium can behave very differently because “mycelium composite” is a category, not a single recipe. Particle size, fibre content, and the ratio of substrate to mycelium all change density. Higher density generally brings higher compressive strength and better edge definition, but it also increases weight and can reduce the springy cushioning that protective packaging needs. Source: htt…

Sounds like this might be your area of expertise. For the rest of us, take a shoebox. How much ballpark extra weight we talkin’ to have a livable planet? (Maybe the mushrooms would be ~2x as heavy as standard shoeboxes for example, to meet existing spec.) Or how about for the glasses box they show on the site in OP, or a plastic sleeve like Americans sell Oreo cookies in. Anybody have any guesses?

Hopefully not used as packaging for Oreos, because unless the fungus has been highly adapted to the substrate, the mycelium will try to grow into the food. Oyster mycelium won't be toxic, but I don't want my Oreos to taste like mushrooms.

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#114

Post by Nifty3929 »

jcims wrote: post #34

Just a side note. I started growing mushrooms a couple of years ago. Very interesting and fulfilling hobby, they are incredibly interesting critters. Takes a little bit of dedication to get started but once you start seeing them fruit and making your own substrate it's quite inexpensive and a lot of fun. I have a feeling lots of folks in this community would really like it. Basic starter package is a 'monotub', selec…

How much trouble is it? I found with gardening that it was fun for a while, but not fun enough for me to sustain itself as a hobby for it's own sake. And the time investment was not worth the crop.

I'd love to grow mushrooms if, once you get past initial learning, it's very low-effort.

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#115

Post by Nifty3929 »

Barbing wrote: post #87
Tepix wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavy? Two packages made from mycelium can behave very differently because “mycelium composite” is a category, not a single recipe. Particle size, fibre content, and the ratio of substrate to mycelium all change density. Higher density generally brings higher compressive strength and better edge definition, but it also increases weight and can reduce the springy cushioning that protective packaging needs. Source: htt…

Sounds like this might be your area of expertise. For the rest of us, take a shoebox. How much ballpark extra weight we talkin’ to have a livable planet? (Maybe the mushrooms would be ~2x as heavy as standard shoeboxes for example, to meet existing spec.) Or how about for the glasses box they show on the site in OP, or a plastic sleeve like Americans sell Oreo cookies in. Anybody have any guesses?

Heavy means more fuel to ship it. Maybe still a net-win, I don't know.

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#116

Post by eucyclos »

Barbing wrote: post #85
foobiekr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always a risk of things like this. For example, to make my winecap bed, I had to get a bunch of woodchips. There is no way woodchips that one will buy in bulk are not contaminated with the spores of other wood-eating fungus. What you learn is how to positively identify the mushrooms you intend to produce/eat. It doesn't take long. I've only had alien mushrooms show up once.

Do people ever try to irradiate or fumigate or however they’d treat the woodchips? Maybe it would cost 10 times as much as the wood chips themselves… small batch spore bakeoffs…

Pressure cooking in small batches is the diy standard, I've had good results with a standard insta-pot

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#117

Post by eucyclos »

bdamm wrote: post #113
Barbing wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like this might be your area of expertise. For the rest of us, take a shoebox. How much ballpark extra weight we talkin’ to have a livable planet? (Maybe the mushrooms would be ~2x as heavy as standard shoeboxes for example, to meet existing spec.) Or how about for the glasses box they show on the site in OP, or a plastic sleeve like Americans sell Oreo cookies in. Anybody have any guesses?

Hopefully not used as packaging for Oreos, because unless the fungus has been highly adapted to the substrate, the mycelium will try to grow into the food. Oyster mycelium won't be toxic, but I don't want my Oreos to taste like mushrooms.

I don't think the packaging is supposed to be alive at the time of usage.

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#118

Post by yunwal »

tlavoie wrote: post #97
foobiekr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always a risk of things like this. For example, to make my winecap bed, I had to get a bunch of woodchips. There is no way woodchips that one will buy in bulk are not contaminated with the spores of other wood-eating fungus. What you learn is how to positively identify the mushrooms you intend to produce/eat. It doesn't take long. I've only had alien mushrooms show up once.

On the other hand, the morels that seemed to come with a load of wood chips were great for the year or two we had them. I tried growing a little wine cap bed once, and it hadn't gone well. Perhaps it was the chickens pecking at it, can't say. I do still get wine caps on occasion, but they have migrated to more far-flung parts of the yard.

> the morels that seemed to come with a load of wood chips were great for the year or two we had them.

You probably already know this, but for anyone reading, there’s a species of mushrooms that looks kind of like morels that is poisonous, potentially fatally so.

https://www.foraged.com/blog/morel-mushrooms-vs-false-morels

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#119

Post by hinkley »

ksymph wrote: post #102
SebaSeba wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thing I've been wondering, I might be completely lost in thinking about this, but do you know: If you grow mushrooms at home is there a risk that it spreads as kind of fungi to the building, furniture etc.?

Nope. Edible mushrooms generally need similar conditions as mold/mildew/rot to grow, i.e. moisture, low light, and the right material -- though they tend to be pickier, and are less suited to human-adjacent conditions. So if you find mushrooms growing where they shouldn't, there's a much deeper moisture and mold issue.

Lots of houses have unresolved water damage issues.

Termites for instance mostly show up in wood that already has water damage.

Re: Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

#120

Post by hinkley »

jcims wrote: post #108
jcims wrote: post #34

Just a side note. I started growing mushrooms a couple of years ago. Very interesting and fulfilling hobby, they are incredibly interesting critters. Takes a little bit of dedication to get started but once you start seeing them fruit and making your own substrate it's quite inexpensive and a lot of fun. I have a feeling lots of folks in this community would really like it. Basic starter package is a 'monotub', selec…

Couple of pics of lions mane and pink oyster that I had sitting around - https://imgur.com/a/ubI3eWt

Winecap mushrooms are stupid simple to grow. I think it might have sailed into the sunset now but up until last year I had a colony over 20ft in diameter. They have a short fruiting life though. Works a bit better if you're a morning person.
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