Lars Dittrich / Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Up to 95% of all shoes end up in a landfill. Footwear made from fungi may offer a solution.
The fashion industry is, at the very least, ecologically deplorable. Textile manufacturers consume around 200 million liters of water per year, while animal leather generates its own immense environmental burden.
But of everything we wear on any given day, shoes are some of the least sustainable accessories. Until 95% of all footwear ends up in landfillswhere all that rubber, plastic and foam takes generations to decompose.
Although there is no easy recipe to create a more environmentally friendly shoe, researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium now hope to have found a solution on fungi.
In conjunction with Marie De Ryck, main shoemaker at the La Monnaie / De Munt opera house, the team presented a new experience, ahead of Milan Design Week: the first boot in the world made entirely from mycelium.
Fungi are best known as spongy mushroomsbut these represent just a fraction of the broader history of these organismssays .
Under the ground, the fungi are often connected by kilometers of networks fibrous mycelium, which, as we reported in ZAP in 2023, function as a kind of ““.
These networks transport vital environmental information between fungi — on precipitation, soil health, access to sunlight, among other data. The communications are so detailed that many mycologists consider these networks a way of intelligence.
Fungi and their mycelial networks are now being applied in new areas, including — something that sounds vaguely familiar to fans of the ““ series — the spaceship that travels instantaneously (as far as Man has ever gone before) through the universe, and even toilets powered by mushrooms.
Lars Dittrich / Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Scientists at Vrije Universiteit Brussel used two types of fungi to create the mycelium boot
But, according to VUB microbiologists, these fungal roots can also be manipulated to create all the components of a shoe, which goes beyond previous experiments that used mushrooms only for surface materials or leather substitutes.
There’s a reason a project like this hasn’t been successful in the past — the mycelium is simply not easy to use. It took more than two years of trial and error to find a balance between natural growth and resistance.
Ultimately, the biggest challenge was finding a way to transform mycelia grown on flat sheets into a three-dimensional, load-bearing sole.
No final, os designers chose to use two types of fungi — one to provide the pliable, foam-like sole, and another for the leather-like upper of the shoe.
“It is a conceptual object intended to frame what is currently possible with this material”, explains Lars Dittrichdesigner at VUB, in a statement. “It reflects the way we cultivate and shape this material, produced from a microorganism, into a functional three-dimensional form.”
“While the initial samples of the material represented a real challenge and did not immediately meet the technical requirements of a complex footwear construction, the advances we have achieved are truly inspiring,” added De Ryck.
While the initial prototype may not be exactly ready for a couture show, it is undoubtedly a promising step towards truly authentic footwear sustainable.
As for the boots that were made for walking…. the originals were by , here is the one by Sabrina Carpenter and Kacey Musgraves:
