I create buildings from mushroom components

“This photo was taken at the MycoTile waste-processing space at the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute in Nairobi. The sacks are full of sugar-cane bagasse, a fibrous material that is left behind when the juice is extracted. Sugar-cane processing factories produce mountains of bagasse as waste.

I’m the co-founder and chief executive of MycoTile, which works to produce affordable building materials out of agricultural waste bonded with oyster-mushroom mycelium, a network of tiny filaments that forms a root-like structure for the mushroom.

Kenya has a serious housing deficit; each year, only around 50,000 housing units are supplied against a demand of about 250,000. We have to think differently.

MycoTile’s insulation panels have been installed in a few projects, including in student accommodation, and we have seen that the material works. It greatly reduced the sound travelling from one room to the next, and helped to regulate the temperature inside. This insulation is affordable, costing about two-thirds of the price of conventional insulation. And unlike those materials, it can be composted at the end of the building’s life.

But the construction industry is conservative and is slow to accept new materials. It’s also hard to convince the general public, who are used to concrete and brick, that we are building reliably with mushrooms.