Lightweight, durable and biodegradable, mushrooms are proving to be a good alternative for bricks made from clay, concrete and other conventional but polluting construction materials.

How it works is agricultural waste materials like straw is combined with mycelium, a network of fungal threads that function as mushrooms' "roots." It will be left to grow into a brick for two weeks.

The product will then be "cooked" in an oven or treated with chemicals to kill the fungi. The fungi will continue to eat the supporting material that initially gave them structure. But cooking or treating it with chemicals stops the fungi from eating the material and weakening the product's integrity.