Fashion Can Do Better Than Factory-Grown Mushroom Leather
Rethinking sustainable materials through the lens of environmental contribution.
Buzz surrounding innovative materials is everywhere, from mushroom leather to lab-grown animal skins, the fashion industry is racing to create next-generation materials to replace leather. Although they are touted as sustainable solutions, these novel materials are often misguided attempts that neglect to consider how they contribute to and impact nature. Replacing animal products with plant-based feedstocks, lab-grown substrates, and synthetic inputs is not a sustainability strategy that will result in the positive outcomes that the world needs. The labeling of innovative materials as nature-based solutions, low-impact, and carbon neutral is the subtle way that material developers, fashion brands, and retailers are fueling greenwashed marketing campaigns and confusing consumers by oversimplifying problems and distracting us from addressing the root causes of environmental harm.
Nature is a community
While consumers are becoming savvy about vegan leather, which is typically just plastic, another material that seems to be getting a free pass is so-called mushroom leather. Substances like mushroom leather, which is made by growing sheets of mycelium that can be tanned and used like leather, are designed not with nature in mind, but intentionally separate from it. Single aspects of nature – in this case fungi spores –are placed into a manufacturing setting where the outcome of production is not a healthy ecosystem, but a substrate that was grown with no contribution to the natural world.
Nature is a community of living organisms where everything contributes to the complex web of life. Fungi play an impressively important role in maintaining healthy environments, and we are just at the beginning of understanding their role is our planet’s ecosystems as decomposers, transformers of nutrients, and even as information networks, allowing for other organisms to communicate with each other. (I highly recommend watching Fantastic Fungi.)
Through this lens of contribution, it’s easy to see that mycelium products do not hold up as a sustainable material. Growing mycelium in plastic tubs may be considered novel and innovative, but it's not a nature-based solution. We need to work with nature and not make ourselves and our materials separate from it. There is no potential for factory grown mycelium to have a positive impact on the environment because connections between the fungi and the other components of the ecosystem are nonexistent.
Innovative materials can be intriguing, especially when they are presented as a silver bullet solution. But we need a more critical lens to view these new materials, especially as they begin to gain traction in the marketplace, and as brands use their marketing platform to educate consumers on sustainability. We must always be asking ourselves: how are these materials grown; what is their impact (and potential for both negative and positive impacts); and how do they contribute to our environment?
But mushroom leather is replacing conventional leather, right?
Replacement of conventionally grown materials with lower impact alternatives is the standard argument for sustainable or preferred fibers, but there are flaws with this thinking when we consider the whole context of leather production. First, not all leather has the same impact even though it is often presented that way in impact accounting protocols. Hides are sourced from myriad types of operations – from confined settings to pastured raised and finished regenerative ranches. Therefore, the impact of how the livestock are managed is highly variable, ranging from harmful to restorative. Second, skins are a byproduct that are often landfilled or incinerated and it’s common for ranchers to pay a fee to the slaughterhouse to handle the disposal of the hides. Therefore, the growth of leather-alternatives does not reduce demand for cattle, it just means that more hides will be wasted rather than being turned into a high-quality, durable, and beautiful product.
Innovate the business models, not materials, to support nature
For brands that are serious about impactful sustainable materials solutions, seeking out and purchasing leather from regenerative farms is key because animals, when managed properly, contribute to the health of the system in which they live, restoring the beauty, diversity, and richness of our natural environments. There are innovation opportunities here in how business and sourcing is conducted. Like the animals and fungi, brands need to question how they are contributing to the system they are operating within. At scale support and uptake of regeneratively grown leather will mean farmers across the world will be rewarded for managing pastured livestock and making their lands more abundant to support life of all kinds - mycelium, bacteria, plants, and animals. On the other hand, supporting manufactured mushroom leather and lab-grown hides at scale places more demand on industrial infrastructure and it reduces our connections to land managers, further separating the fashion industry from nature.
Put simply, the scaled use of mycelium-based and lab-grown materials does nothing to make the planet healthier. Better sourcing practices to support regenerative farmers and ranchers means actively participating in restoring life on Earth. While the industry is continuously distracted by the enticingly simplistic message of animal-free and low-impact, there is a huge opportunity right in front of us to participate in the creation of an abundant and beautiful world we wish to live in.