Eureka: Soundproofing with mushrooms – how greener panels are making their way into studios

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. Robert Strese is an electronics and physics enthusiast from Latvia, with a knack for blending mechanical precision with creative ideas. His latest project is Sporanex, a company that's developing sustainable acoustic solutions using mycelium and circular waste materials. Sporanex makes acoustic panels, the kind you'll find in recording studios, theatres or restaurants. But unlike traditional petroleum-based foams, these panels are made from wood waste, so they don't just dampen the sound, they're better for the planet.

0:57And they can even be returned to the Earth as fertilizer after their life. Here is Roberts with more on the Sporonex story.

1:10I'm Roberts Treza, and my company's name is Sporonex. perhaps you know this foam base like acoustical panels and like studios restaurants and so on and they're right now made from petroleum mainly and what we are doing we're taking wood waste for instance like wood dust from grinding and so on like the wood you usually don't use but burn or just put in a bin or whatever and we're taking that growing a mycelium like a mushroom in it and creating sound panels of that. And now even we are looking into expanding it into algae-based. So we are taking the blue algae, which, like, I'm from Latvia, so it's Baltic Sea nearby, and we have an extreme problem of blue algae because, like, fertilization goes in the sea, and it just grows, like, uncontrollably, and it kills other species.

2:02So now it's something that we want to get not just waste, you know, it's something we want to get rid of, But you don't want to let the CO2 in it go in the atmosphere, right? So we're taking that and growing mycelium and creating sound panels. But asteroids, this is the best part. You're tired of your studio or whatever. You just want a fresh beginning. You can take your sound panels from the studio and use it as a fertilizer for your garden, flowers, or in this case, trees. So eventually the carbon, which came from like wood waste, goes through the process and goes back as, for instance, fertilizer for the woods.

2:49So originally from like first grade, something like that, I was like working with the wood. And then I was also doing music school, so I'm playing piano and the salon. Two, three years back I started doing electrical music and I was in studio playing something and you know like those studios which are like all black you know with all foam like in everywhere like simply under table even you know. I was like this is not good. I was reading something about like how they produce it and it's like maybe I can do better and then sometime later I was working my workshop like wood workshop and it was like regular cleaning you know after like months doing something you have to clean it up and I was cleaning and dust there and like I have like 350 liters bags full of wood you know like weights basically something you cannot use I was like oh actually this kind of works I have this material which I don't use because I new in industry they sometimes use for instance like small wood chunks and like just put on them on walls and like a bags to have it like a soundproof but it's not the best option you know it's not good quality it's just temporary solution for that and it was like okay how can I like make those like small particles stick together you know like glue it's I don't want to do that really Then this was like, okay, resin.

4:21Like in Latvia, it's like we have an enormous amount of resin, etc. So, okay, I tried something, but it's so complicated. You have to heat it up to 300 degrees and it's messy. The chemicals which are coming out are like toxic. And at the same time, approximately, one of my friends said like, oh, I'm growing like eatable mushrooms at my home. You know, you have those small like boxes. And I ordered one. I tried it. I made like a cube of it. And I tried it and it was like, oh, this is like solid, you know, and I can't break it and so on. This is actually what I was searching for. I tried it and it worked out great.

5:03It was like I could make almost any form. Now you just put in mold and you have like any form possible.

5:17Believe me, when you say to musicians, like some, you know, like, in general musicians are artists, and you would say, oh, well, this is a mushroom. They are sold already, you know. Mushroom? What? Like, what? Many would have had questions, like, why like music? Why not just like, for instance, restaurants or like public spaces. And my philosophy there is that if you want to do something with a sound, then the music industry is the best one because it's going to be the hardest feedback. It's going to be the hardest answers, the hardest questions. And if you prove that, well, this product can survive through music industry, then it can do whatever, you know, in any industry.

6:04So the idea is hopefully during this year, to the end of the year, to, I know it's a bit big goal, but it's a thousand square meters of sound panels. These thousand square meters can replace 50 tons of CO2. And also a smaller goal is to get the production in the scale. So the idea is to produce at least 100 square meters a month.

6:41That was Robert Straser, the founder of Sporanex, and you can learn more about this most innovative of businesses by heading to sporanex.com. And that's all for this episode of Eureka. My thanks to Ian Wiley for his reporting. We'll be back at the same time next week. Do look out for The Entrepreneurs, which is available every Wednesday. The programme is produced by Laura Kramer, with audio editing by Jack Dewars, And if you want to get in touch with us here at The Entrepreneurs, you can email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye. And thanks for listening to Eureka.