Finnish company designs headphones made of fungus and microbes

368 million headphones were sold worldwide in 2017, according to the statistic database Statista. And most of those headphones were composed of materials that depend on non-renewable or biodegradable resources, which translates into tons of plastic, leather and synthetic leathers.

Finnish company Aivan offers a new and creative solution for this problem: Korvaa, headphones made by fungus and microbes.

Korvaa is an experimental science collaboration that explores the design and functionalities of novel, bio-based, microbially grown materials. It was created by synthetic biology scientists, industrial designers, artists and filmmakers.

The project began because one of the persons in charge realized the little use that was being made of materials made by microbes, and the consequent loss of all that potential. 

Why a headphone?

According to Aivan, a headset was originally chosen as the first physical implementation to showcase these microbially grown materials in a three-dimensional form because they are a very widespread and popular article and because of the variety of materials in the product itself.

From a design viewpoint, a headset combines various material properties in compact size and form; hard, foam-like, pliable, rigid and solid materials, as well as mesh fabric materials. It was, therefore, a way to test how far biological materials can get.

The name of the product originates from the Finnish language, where Korva has an anatomical meaning ”ear” and Korvaa is a verb, meaning ”to substitute, compensate or replace”.

New technology to get circular bioeconomy

Synbio (short for Synthetic Biology) is a rapidly developing, disruptive technology that enables the design and engineering of new biological organisms, as well as the re-design of existing biological systems, for useful purposes.

Synthetic organisms can produce a variety of desired chemicals, materials, medicine or fuels from renewable raw materials, waste fractions and CO₂. This technology will have a paramount role in the transition from a fossil-based economy to a sustainable, circular bioeconomy.