M2Enviro

🌱🏄♂️ It's finally here - the moment we've all been waiting for! 🏄♂️🌱 After weeks of hard work and dedication, we're thrilled to reveal the final product of our Hempcelium® surfboard! While this first iteration may be a bit heavy for high-performance surfing, it's a significant step towards a sustainable future. With continued research and development, who knows? Maybe one day, every professional surfer will be riding a mushroom board. You can still purchase a Hempcelium® Surfboard from OpenSea, but hurry, as there's limited supply! 🍄🌊 #SustainableSurfing #HempceliumBoard

We've made significant progress with our Hempcelium® surfboard! After the drying phase, we moved on to the next crucial steps. First, we applied a bio resin, enhancing durability while staying true to our sustainable ethos. Then came shaping and sanding, where we refined the board to perfection. As the finishing touch, we laid down a stunning graphic film, adding a personal flair to each board. Stay tuned for our next post, where we unveil the final product of our sustainable surfing journey! 🌊✨ #SustainableSurfing #HempceliumBoard

As the Hempcelium surfboard started and completed its slow drying process, anticipation builds for the next phase of our process. The drying step is essential as it kills the fungus and renders it inactive and stops it from growing. During this process the fungus releases all its water, increases its strength and decreases slightly in size. As a result of the shrinkage the Hempcelium pulled away from the frame slightly, which isn’t ideal but something we identified we’d be able to fix during processing. Next time, we’ll go into more depth on how we processed the surfboard and took it from a dried mass of mycelium composite to a nearly finished product before the final finishing touches. As for now, make sure to continue to follow our journey on social media as we document our journey, creating a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. Together, we're forging a new frontier in sustainable surfing, one board at a time.

As we transition to the next phase of our eco-surfing endeavour, our focus turns to nurturing the growth of mycelium on the substrate within our 3D-printed surfboard frame. This stage demands precision and patience, as we allow the mycelium to envelop every inch of the substrate and become somewhat intertwined with the frame, creating a resilient fungal network. Any gaps left unfilled could compromise the integrity of the board, necessitating a return to square one. Thus, our team ensures working in an aseptic manner, mitigating the chances of contamination, while ensuring and monitoring the growth of the mycelium. This rigorous attention to detail is not merely a precaution but a testament to our unwavering commitment to sustainability. Now fully grown, our surfboard looks a wet, white fluffy marshmallow consistency. Growth was successful and no contamination occurred. The next step is to dry out the surfboard. This step kills the fungus and renders it inactive and stops it from growing. During this process the fungus releases all its water and increases in strength. Next time, we’ll dive deeper into this process. As for now, make sure to continue to follow our journey on social media as we document our journey, creating a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. Together, we're forging a new frontier in sustainable surfing, one board at a time.

Preparing our 3D printed surfboard frame for the next phase involves carefully packing it with mycelium composite material, ensuring no gaps are left unfilled. This step is crucial; any mistakes could mean starting over. Contamination is also a concern, so aseptic measures are paramount. Donning gloves, hair nets, and face masks, we sterilize every touchpoint with alcohol. This attention to detail maintains our eco-surfing vision's integrity and improves our chances for success in the next stage. Follow our journey on social media as we document the fusion of mycelium with the frame, creating a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. Together, we're forging a new frontier in sustainable surfing, one board at a time. #EcoSurfing #SustainableInnovation

Wishing a joyous Eid to all who are celebrating! 🌙 May this day overflow with happiness and harmony for you and your dear ones. #EidMubarak

Continuing the process of bringing our Hempcelium® Surfboard to life involves setting the foundation. Taking advantage of computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D printing, we've turned dreams into reality in creating a surfboard frame. The journey as a whole has been an iterative process, deciding what works and what doesn’t, and when we do, improving on it. The design we came up with is a surfboard frame or skeleton that allows us to pack the board with our Hempcelium® material which enables easier post-processing further downstream. We used PLA, a plant-based compostable plastic, to 3D print the surfboard skeleton in separate components before glueing them together. The final product is a beautiful bone-white surfboard frame that will provide the framework for the board going forward. Stay tuned for more details in our upcoming updates! Join us on our social media platforms as we document this groundbreaking process. Next up, we’ll show you the process of packing the board and allowing it to grow! Letting the mycelium intertwine itself with the frame, becoming one complete entity.

Embarking on our quest to redefine packaging, we're diving deeper into the innovative journey of crafting our Hempcelium® Surfboard. Leveraging the same process utilised for grain spawn, we now turn our focus to hemp. With precision and care, we introduce our fully inoculated grain spawn culture into our hydrated and sterilised hemp substrate, marking the beginning of a transformative journey. As time unfolds, a remarkable metamorphosis takes place within the hemp substrate, mirroring the progress seen with grain spawn. What once stood as raw material now evolves into a vibrant ecosystem of mycelium networks, intricately intertwining with the fibres of hemp, fortifying its structure and enhancing its eco-friendly attributes. After several days of nurturing growth on the hemp substrate, this fully colonised substrate bag will soon be broken up into smaller pieces and packed into our specially crafted 3D printed surfboard frame — stay tuned for more details in our upcoming updates! Join us on our social media platforms as we document this groundbreaking process. Together, let's embark on a journey toward a greener future. Let's redefine the boundaries of possibility and pave the way for a more sustainable tomorrow.

In our pursuit of creating a disruptive packaging solution, we've turned to an unconventional source: mycelium, the root-like structure of fungi. In the early stages of our pioneering approach, there's a striking similarity to simple mushroom growing. Both processes, growing mushrooms and creating Hempcelium®, share common ground as they commence with fungal cultures used to inoculate sterilized rye grain. This substrate acts as a catalyst for mycelium growth and serves as a vector to inoculate our bulk substrate, hemp. The process kicks off by introducing fungal cultures—available in liquid form or grown on petri dishes. A small squirt of liquid culture or a small section from a petri dish is deposited into a freshly sterilized consol jar of rye grain, our chosen grain. By subjecting the grain to high heat and pressure for sterilization, we eliminate any competing microorganisms, providing the fungi with optimal conditions to thrive and propagate. A week or two later, a marked transformation in color and consistency becomes evident within the jar. The grain has now been entirely enveloped in a white, mesh-like web—this is mycelium. Moving forward, we'll utilize this grain spawn to either inoculate more rye grain or to inoculate our hemp substrate, which will constitute the entirety of the Hempcelium® Packaging final product. Stay tuned to our social media channels for updates on the next stages of this exciting process—we guarantee you won't want to miss it!

MYCELIUM MAVERICKS Inspired by our passion for innovation and environmental responsibility we challenged ourselves to create Africa’s first mycelium composite surfboards using our Hempcelium® material. Through meticulous R&D, experimentation, and a commitment to sustainable practices, our team has delved into uncharted territory to bring this vision to life. In this series, we will document every step of our Mushroom Surfboard Story. Adding a digital twist to sustainability - we’ve launched the surfboards as NFTs! NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, authenticate unique digital assets via blockchain, representing ownership of specific items like artwork or music. NFTs are not interchangeable due to their uniqueness. They offer digital scarcity and provenance, enabling transparent ownership verification on the blockchain. Purchasing an NFT will afford the owner the accompanying physical asset, the surfboard itself! 10 sustainable surfboards are currently available as NFTs on The OpenSea Platform. See them for yourself - https://lnkd.in/dXYWfqd