Daily Markup #732: MYCL expands to Japan with new research facility & exhibition for biomaterials; has 50+ recipes for growing mushrooms from waste

Ching Yee Ho

April 27, 2023 · 2 min read

Sustainability looks like fun(gi)

“When people think about the future, they often think of science fiction films, of going to Mars or about artificial intelligence. However, when I think about the future, I think about sustainability. More specifically, I think about how we need to be a lot more sustainable to even have a future,” said Ronaldiaz Hartantyo, Co-founder & Chief Innovation Officer of 500-backed sustainability company Mycotech Lab (MYCL).
In line with the team’s mission to create a positive impact in the world, MYCL produces sustainable leather using mushroom-based materials, including their original mushroom leather Mylea™. To engage a wider community and expand in the sustainable biomaterials market, they launched a new research facility in Nagano, Japan!
To kick off the new expansion, MYCL collaborated with FabCafe Tokyo, a series of innovation labs, to organize the WTF (We The Future) Exhibition, which will run from 24 September to 2 October. The exhibition aims to redefine what future technology is by posing the seemingly simple question, “What is The Future?”.
Their journey started in Indonesia, where the team saw much underutilized potential. “Indonesia is a country with lots of agriculture, which means that a lot of agricultural waste is produced. From all this waste, only around 1% of it is getting converted into compost,” Ronaldiaz explained. “This means that the other 99% of the waste goes to landfills; which we saw as an opportunity. Our vision was to use this waste as a sustainable resource for creating the materials of the future.”
Today, the team has created about 50 different recipes to grow mushrooms from 50 types of waste. “This is what makes the process of making Mylea beautiful; we can adapt the process to what kind of waste is locally available,” he added.
Moving forward, MYCL wants to target the B2B2C market. Ronaldiaz shared, “We want to spread our brand values to the grassroots, to the customers themselves. We hope that through the WTF! Exhibition we can spread awareness of our values throughout the production process, expressing better than before why our products are important.”
Read the full interview here.