Full Document:

Seeking innovation

As we face more challenges, designers, engineers, and visionaries increasingly look towards nature for inspiration. I predict that the study and importance of bio-design will only expand in the future.

Nature’s recyclers

Mushrooms are an interesting organism to study and work with, as fungi take up the mantle of recycling materials in the wild. Perhaps by understanding these entities, we can learn how to better process our waste as well.

Dissolving plastic with mushrooms

In recent years, various research agencies and scientists have found that various species of mushrooms can produce an enzyme called: “PET hydrolase”, which can break down PET plastic. Could we harness this ability to reduce household plastic garbage?

Real-life testing

In order to realize how PET plastic could be consumed, and how approachable someone could rear mushrooms in their home, we decided to grow our own mushrooms.

Intervention points

Through preparing to grow our mushrooms, we had noticed that many of the steps could be difficult for one person to handle, and without proper measures, could leave a mess. With our mushroom terrarium, we hoped to streamline the fungi growing process.

Experimenting with PETase

Besides creating a control group to observe the growing of Oyster Mushrooms, we had utilized a smaller batch of spawn to see how plastic could be affected. In a lab environment, scientists had proven that the PETase (“PET hydrolase”) could break down the petrochemical, however, would it work in the home?

Oyster mushrooms!

A collection of images showing the development of our specimen. These photos span roughly 2 months of growth.

Collecting specimen

After harvesting the mushrooms, we measured and documented how many harvests each batch produced. Shown here, even the smallest fruiting fungi were 8cm large.

Our timeline

Shown here are the dates of major events during our roughly three months of growing mushrooms. To show relative growth activity over this period of time, I used the red area underneath our timeline.

Test results

When we open up the batch of Oyster mushrooms with the PET plastic pieces, we could see that some level of degradation had occurred. However, it came to our attention that others had found more success by exposing the PET to UV light: which is meant to break down the bonds of the synthetic material.

Conclusions to our tests

To summarize this phase of experimentation, we consolidated our findings. All in all, we were pleasantly surprised by how robust the Oyster mushrooms were. Although it was unfortunate that we didn’t get to investigate the use of UV lights on the plastic, we agreed that further testing would be required for completeness.

Developing the product

With testing behind us, we moved on to develop our mushroom terrarium design. Our three main concerns were that:

• Our design needed to look appealing

• The unit should be easy to clean

• The terrarium should be modular

Ideating through sketching

To initially begin designing our our unit, we used sketches to help communicate our ideas efficiently. This allowed me and my design partner to show technicians potential issues with our designs and to decide on a form that could be manufactured.

Market research

To contextualize how our product could be placed in the greater market, we looked at existing companies and services within the same design space. By learning from the successes and failures of others, we consolidated our design.

Terrarium design

To translate our terrarium from a 2D sketch to a 3D model, we utilized CAD. By using Fusion 360 and various plug-ins, we were able to create forms and shape them through structural testing.

Realizing our design

After creating the main terrarium unit, we modelled peripheral attachments designed to improve the user experience of growing the mushrooms. Besides making a handheld grinder to grate the plastic, we also created a plastic aggregate collection shelf with integrated UV exposure bay.

Detailing our model

To increase the verisimilitude of our concept, we rendered our mushroom growing set to show external parties how we imagined the system to work. By using simple textures, the project quickly came to life.

Rendering close-ups

Shown on the right are the plastic container unit with integrated UV exposure bay (Left top and bottom), as well as close ups of the handheld grinder unit with glass plastic aggregate container (Right top and bottom). Seeing that our intent was to push our modular system to mass market, these renders were invaluable.

Construction plans

In preparation to show our work to manufacturers, we had prepared technical drawings for clarity. Here, we defined the size and proportions of our modular designs to fit into a kitchen corner for the optimal growing conditions of the mushrooms.

Listing components

To illustrate the different components associated with our design, we created an exploded view of our product. By outlining these parts, we could better visualize how the pieces interacted with each other.

Imagined experience

We decided to create “hero images” to help sell the realism of our design at the end of the project. Shown on the right is a sample of some of our renders.

Ad meliora…

Throughout this project, it was insightful to learn how products are developed and can reach mass market. As I had taken on the leading design role for this proposal, I gained experience in managing a team, communicating with manufacturers, and conducting user experience testing.