Blue planet, green ideas | Mushrooms you want in your walls

Produce construction materials from old linen and mushrooms? This is the challenge that a small thrift store in Kamouraska is preparing to take on to reduce the number of clothes it sends to the landfill each week.

The instigator of the project, Elodie Fortin, from Atelier du Partage, gave herself the mission, a year ago, to find a solution to textile waste. “We have calculated that approximately 62% of the clothes we receive end up in the trash,” she says.

“At the beginning, we went to local businesses and schools to offer them our scraps instead of them buying new DIY products,” she says. It was tiny. We have managed to revitalize only 4% of our textile waste. »

Without being discouraged, M^me Fortin began to learn about mycomaterials, a composite material that is obtained by combining one or more strains of mushrooms with all kinds of raw materials.

Mission accomplished. In partnership with the Biopterre college technology transfer center, the Atelier du Partage de Saint-Pascal managed, last winter, to manufacture and sell Christmas baubles made entirely of wool, cotton, leather and mycelium, a mass of filaments that serve as roots for mushrooms.

“It worked really well,” emphasizes Elodie Fortin. People were curious and wanted to get some. »

In recent years, the quest to find renewable materials that can replace the petrochemical industry has increased interest in these organic materials. Being biodegradable and made from renewable resources, they are an ecological and sustainable alternative to single-use plastic.

Last June, the initiative was rewarded by the Social Economy of Bas-Saint-Laurent organization. L’Atelier du Partage won the second Ecoresponsibility prize of 2024, as well as a $3,000 grant.

Mycomaterials

The SME is now tackling the next stage of its project: the production of sound-absorbing panels based on mycomaterials.

When you inoculate a strain of fungus into textiles or wood shavings, and leave everything to incubate for one to two weeks, you obtain a paste that can be molded into the desired shape.

“For the first tests, we tried to mold spheres. You have to wait about a month for the substance obtained to harden and at the end of the process, you obtain balls whose texture resembles that of cork,” explains Elodie Fortin.

People with fine noses do not have to fear the odors that may come from mycomaterials. “It doesn’t smell musty or damp, even though fungi are involved in the process,” explains Marilee Thiffault, laboratory technician at Biopterre, who is participating in research on M’s project.^me Fortin.

Some daring entrepreneurs, like Elodie Fortin, want to take advantage of the material’s insulating properties to revolutionize the construction industry.

“I don’t want to replace a plastic kid with a mycomaterial kid. The goal is to make a useful object with old pieces of laundry,” explains M.^me Fortin, who surveyed residents and merchants in the MRC of Kamouraska to find out their needs.

“There, we are lining up to make sound-absorbing panels. There are a lot of municipal rooms that are poorly soundproofed in the area, and it is an option that allows us to pass a lot of fabrics,” says the committed trader.

Currently, the Biopterre research team is carrying out tests to determine the optimal size and thickness of the panels.

The challenges to overcome are numerous, according to laboratory technician Marilee Thiffault. “We are in the early stages of mycomaterials,” she points out.

Currently, the infrastructure does not yet make it possible to make mycomaterials viable on an industrial scale, says M.^me Thiffault. According to her, we should find a way to automate the molding stage, which is done by hand, to reduce production costs.

“That’s why it’s important to continue research. Because if we stop at current issues, we don’t innovate,” she concludes.