Today's KNOWLEDGE Share : World’s First Fungi-Powered MycoDigestible Diapers

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Hiro Technologies Launches World’s First Fungi-Powered MycoDigestible Diapers:

Each MycoDigestible Diaper comes with a small packet of shelf-stable, plastic-eating fungi

Hiro Technologies officially launches the world’s first MycoDigestible Diapers (means “digested by fungi”), a first-of-its-kind product designed to break down in a landfill thanks to fungi-powered decomposition technology. Co-founded by serial entrepreneurs Miki Agrawal (Thinx, Tushy) and Tero Isokauppila (Four Sigmatic), Hiro's launch marks the debut of an entirely new category of sustainability a natural end-of-life solution for plastic waste, beginning with the one item parents can’t live without.

Every year, over 18 billion diapers are discarded into U.S. landfills—each one destined to sit for 500 years, leaking microplastics and chemicals into soil and water. Globally, the plastic crisis has spiraled out of control, with 430 million tons of plastic waste generated annually and less than 10% of it recycled. While governments stall and corporations greenwash, the problem grows deeper and dirtier. But a new company is offering a radically hopeful path forward, powered by the planet’s oldest clean-up crew: fungi.

Diapers are the number one source of household plastic waste and the third largest contributor to landfills overall,” says Agrawal. Each baby goes through ~5000 diapers. The very first disposable diaper ever made? It’s still in a landfill today. We knew there had to be a better way.

Each MycoDigestible Diaper comes with a small packet of shelf-stable, plastic-eating fungi. Parents simply throw the packet away with the used diaper no extra steps required. Once the diaper reaches a landfill, the fungi activate in the presence of moisture and begin to break down the diaper’s materials from the inside out. These fungi secrete enzymes that target and sever the carbon bonds in plastic, transforming the waste into mycelium and nutrient-rich soil over time. Traditional landfill conditions are typically too dry, oxygen-poor, or contaminated for decomposition to occur naturally, but Hiro's innovation brings its own biological degradation system directly into the waste stream no industrial composting or special infrastructure required.

In parallel, Hiro is working with waste facilities and landfill operators to embed fungi more broadly across their systems, with a long-term goal of creating an ecosystem where fungi can help accelerate the breakdown of other plastic waste at scale.

While plastic-eating fungi were first discovered by scientists over a decade ago, their potential has remained locked in labs until now. Hiro has pioneered a commercial, shelf-stable fungi technology that targets plastic at a molecular level, breaking it down into soil and mycelium (the root system of mushrooms) without harmful emissions or energy-intensive processes.

source:Hiro /nonwovens-industry.com