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

magicalmushroom.com

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

#91

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

This seems like a nice stepping stone towards something cool, but having the forming happen at a dedicated facility seems to miss the point. The promise of this technology is that instead of:

- make packaging

-> ship to where product is packed

-> ship to consumer

-> ship to recycler

you can:

- grow packaging where product is packed

-> ship to consumer

- consumer composts it in their garden

That is, the packaging should just make one trip instead of three. Hopefully they eventually figure out how to make kits so that shippers can just grow the packaging around the actual product. The hard part will be ensuring that the biomass used as feedstock (likely a waste product from some process nearby to where the product is packed) is actually something that people want in their garden. Doable, but maybe not the kind of thing markets can be trusted to do on their own.

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

#94

Post by 0x1ch »

idontwantthis wrote: post #77
0x1ch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it would require the bad spores to be carried with the good ones. Typically you get a slurry solution that you carry in distilled water, injecting your substrates. That would need to have the bad stuff in it as well.

Don’t they float in the air?

Wild spores and such yeah. When you purchase spores for the intent of growing them, you generally get a kit to mix them into a syringe or they already arrive in the syringe ready to be used. I tried growing some culinary strains and they generally come in the mail like that.

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

#95

Post by aram99 »

idontwantthis wrote: post #77
0x1ch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it would require the bad spores to be carried with the good ones. Typically you get a slurry solution that you carry in distilled water, injecting your substrates. That would need to have the bad stuff in it as well.

Don’t they float in the air?

only spores I think

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

#97

Post by tlavoie »

foobiekr wrote: post #80
idontwantthis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any risk of wild, potentially dangerous, mushrooms colonizing your garden?

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.

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

#98

Post by lemax »

convolvatron wrote: post #75
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…

what do you use as a low-cost substrate? I think this would be something I'd be into, but the idea of buying 5lb bags to be delivered by UPS really kind of takes the magic out of it.

Mycelium has been shown to colonize some of the most unexpected substrates - cigarette butts [1], sawdust, you name it.

https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/en/good-practices...

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

#99

Post by Tepix »

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?

I've done some experiments with mycelium as a construction material, but I'm hardly an expert. Mycelium weighs anywhere between 50 and 950kg/m3. Usually you won't have mycelium as thin as cardboard, because you want use mycelium as a 3d buffer, replacing styrofoam. EPS (styrofoam) has densities of 15-30kg/m3. So while it's more sustainable it's also heavier.
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