MYCL uses palm oil waste to grow a viable low carbon, sustainable leather alternative and, at the same time incentivises farmers to stop burning their crop waste.
Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of palm oil, a significant contributor to air pollution. Once the palm oil is extracted from the fruit, the leftover fibre and shells are usually burnt, sending chemicals and carbon into the air, creating severe air pollution that threatens the health and lives of people in nearby communities.
But, what if that waste was reused instead of burnt?
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MYCL cleverly solves two problems at once – buying crop waste before it’s burnt, thus giving farmers a source of extra income. They then create an innovative alternative to leather that can be used in many other sectors, from clothes and shoes to cars to furniture.
Traditional leather production relies on toxic chemicals that contribute to 8-10% of global emissions caused by the fashion industry. MYCL transforms the crop waste into fine substrate sheets and uses mushroom-growing technology to cultivate mycelium. The mycelium is a root-like structure that wraps the sheets. These are then processed using innovative bio-engineering techniques to produce MYLEA, an incredible sustainable leather-like material.
MYCL grows mycelium in small labs near crop waste sources, minimising transportation and accompanying emissions. MYLEA can be grown on different crop wastes, such as rice and cocoa, adding to scalability of the solution.
MYCL measures its impact by kg of agricultural waste kept from burning and carbon sequestration from the growth of the mycelium leather produced. They have saved 21 tonnes/year agricultural waste, preventing over 4 million kg (334,640 tCO2e) emissions – for comparison, a flight from London-Jakarta-London emits 4.69 tonnes CO2. They’ve also achieved -0.441 tCO2e/year carbon sequestration from producing 1,580 sq. ft of mycelium leather.
The business has created 65 new green jobs and improved the lives of 195 farmers. Despite being in the early stages of growth, the business is B-Corp certified, which means they meet high standards of social and environmental accountability and performance. They aim to work with 500 farmers this year and are collaborating with fashion designers and a car manufacturer.
Adi Reza, Co-Founder and CEO, MYCL
MYCL is focused on bringing mycelium technology to a wider audience, with ambitions to expand into Japan and Singapore and then more widely across Asia and Europe by 2030.
They aim to turn 20,000 tonnes of crop waste into mycelium leather/year by 2030, cutting carbon emissions by around seven million tonnes/year compared to waste burning and traditional leather production. At the same time, they aim to produce 10 million sq. ft of leather and an associated -4.6 million tCO2e sequestration.
