Waishaka Galantra Setya

We've been working with different agricultural byproducts as feedstocks for our biomaterials. We chose them because they were abundant, often overlooked, and seemed too valuable to simply be treated as waste. Eventually, some of them became harder to source. As market demand changed, many farmers switched to different crop varieties, making some of the byproducts we relied on harder to find. We had to find alternative materials that might also offer similar value. That's one of the things I find most interesting about biomaterials research. The challenge isn't only in the lab. A lot of it is driven by changes in agriculture, local industries, and market demand, which constantly affect the materials we work with. I'd love to hear others have dealt with this.

When we first started developing biomaterials, we put most of our efforts into making the material as good as possible. We thought that using standard process to produce sustainable materials was enough. As our clients grew, we realized there was one question we hadn't really answered, were our products truly sustainable beyond the materials we used? To support our sustainability claims, we needed green certifications. Just when we thought we were ready, the results surprised us. Some parameters were above the allowed limits. From that point on, even small changes in the biofabrication process could affect the results. It shifted our focus from the material itself to the whole production process. We wanted every step to support our sustainability efforts. For those working with biomaterials, what surprised you during certification?

I spent part of this week dealing with contamination issues in a mycelium materials project/production. What stood out wasn't the production process itself, but the environment around it. We're based in a highland area with consistently high humidity. Moreover, there are cattle farms and mushroom farms nearby. Those conditions are great for biological activity, but they also make contamination much harder to control, especially during the rainy season. It's made me wonder how much of scaling biomaterials is actually about improving the manufacturing process, and how much depends on adapting to the local environment. Has anyone working with biological systems run into similar challenges?

Over the past year, we've tested quite a few agri-crop waste/byproducts as substrates for growing mycelium-based materials. Some performed surprisingly well in the lab, but that wasn't the end of the story. A few aren't readily available in our region, so sourcing them would mean shipping them from elsewhere. Others need several pre-treatment steps before they're suitable to use, adding time and increasing the risk of contamination. It reminded me that choosing a substrate isn't only about biological performance. Availability, logistics, and processing can matter just as much when you're thinking about scaling. I'm curious how others balance performance with practicality when evaluating agricultural residues or waste streams.

Something I've noticed while developing mycelium-based leather is that many potential users/clients expect it to behave exactly like conventional leather. Some clients want the same appearance, texture, thickness, and consistency from sheet to sheet, almost as if they were working with synthetic materials. Others are more willing to embrace the fact that biological materials naturally come with a bit of variation. At first, I thought of it as a limitation. After all, we're working with a living material, and some variation is part of the process. But over time, I've started seeing it differently. Those expectations have pushed us to ask better questions and improve our processes. Well, in many ways, they have become part of the research itself! If sustainable materials are going to replace conventional ones at scale, they can't only be environmentally better. They also need to meet the expectations of the people who use them. For those working with biomaterials, have customer expectations changed the direction of your research or product development?