Canadian Myzel Organics believes mushrooms have the power to drive a new era of health, well-being, and environmental stewardship. The organization focuses on the production and promotion of functional mushrooms. Hedgehog Company conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) study on the production of 1 kg of mushroom powder. Markus Sadaka, founder of Myzel Organics, shares their experience with the LCA process and some insights it provided.
Why did you choose to work on sustainability through an LCA?
We conducted an LCA on the production process of 1 kg of our mushroom powder mainly because one of our partners requested it. In order to collaborate with us, this party wanted to see our sustainability performance, measured by an LCA.
This was a globally recognized company, and one of their initial requirements for collaboration was an accurate assessment of our environmental impact.
At that time, I wasn't familiar with what an LCA was. However, I thought: whether we work with this partner or not, pursuing an LCA is beneficial. Since sustainability is our direction, we should validate our efforts with data to support our claims.
When we later shared the LCA insights with this partner, they were very impressed—almost shocked, actually. That's the thing with LCA results: there’s no room for interpretation; it's just facts being presented.
How was sustainability a theme before for your organisation?
We have always been passionate about sustainability and aware of the impact companies have on the environment. This awareness shaped our thinking from the very beginning. Even before acquiring the property, it was clear that we wanted to build a sustainable company.
There was never any hesitation or second thought about making sustainability a core part of our story. It had to be something our customers could rely on and build upon.
How was the process towards the LCA for you?
The most difficult part was right at the beginning: trying to estimate and understand each step of our process. We needed to determine the impact and energy consumption of every stage.
For example, we had to examine the electrical plates, understand the amperage and voltage, and do calculations based on runtime. It was a bit of a math exercise, but we figured it out, and beyond that, the process went pretty seamlessly.
Another challenge was the lack of environmental data for our materials. Producing mushroom powder is done in a controlled environment similar to a pharmaceutical facility. Only a few companies worldwide operate the way we do.
There wasn't a blueprint for us to follow, and there wasn't much information or data available. Finding suitable comparisons was challenging, and I recall the Hedgehog Team searching for the most appropriate data in this situation.
Markus Sadaka, founder of Myzel Organics: “The collaboration with Hedgehog went fairly effortlessly; it was easy working with the team. The experts explained LCA’s and the process in an easy-to-understand way. They did a presentation at the beginning, and along the way they took time to explain more when we asked for it. The same when we asked questions and asked to tweak certain data points or change comparisons in the final report.”
Can you share some of the insights the LCA gave you?
If you want to harvest not only the fruiting body (the mushroom stem and cap) but also the mycelium with all its active compounds, you need a very particular substrate to grow the mushrooms on.
We selected sorghum because it had to be something consumable for people, nutritionally dense, organic, non-GMO, gluten-free and allow for a high bioconversion. A bonus with sorghum is that, unlike other substrates like manure, it doesn't smell. So our neighbours are happy with this choice as well.
However, we import sorghum from North Dakota, USA, and this transportation turned out to be a significant part of our impact—40% of the environmental impact, to be exact. The LCA revealed that the weight of the grain on the truck substantially increases the carbon output from transportation.
We now order 20 metric tons of grain at a time, and this is one of the few raw materials we add to our process. We source our water for free by capturing it from our water retention ponds, which helps minimize our environmental impact even further.
Did the results of the LCA surprise you?
I expected us to score well since sustainability was already a focus for us, and we did: our total Climate Change Impact was 0.552 kg CO2-eq per kilogram of mushroom powder produced.
After receiving the results, I was curious about how we compared to alternatives. So, we recalculated using different ingredients and processed powders. We were once again very impressed with our score.
How can Myzel Organics use the insights the LCA provided?
We now include our sustainability impact in our communications and frequently mention it in conversations with customers. Sustainability is always part of our slide decks during discussions.
We reference our impact and compare it to other ingredients when companies evaluate us, which positively contributes to our reputation. Clients generally appreciate our story, and our sustainability impact enhances this perception.
We definitely want to explore closer sources for sorghum or suitable alternatives, but it’s a challenging crop to grow. It might be possible to grow it closer to us, but it's difficult in Canada due to our colder climate compared to the United States.
But this is something I'd like to address in the future. Since transportation significantly contributes to our impact, now that we understand its extent, we aim to further improve our environmental score by minimizing this impact.
