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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Ester Mbathera

‘People think they’ll smell but they don’t’: building homes from mushroom waste and weeds

Desert in Namibia
Namibia has a severe housing shortage, with woody encroacher bush reducing the amount of land available for building. Photograph: Hoberman Collection/Universal Images Group/Getty

“People think the house would smell because the blocks are made of all-natural products, but it doesn’t smell,” says Kristine Haukongo. “Sometimes, there is a small touch of wood, but otherwise it’s completely odourless.”

Haukongo is the senior cultivator at the research group MycoHab and her job is pretty unusual. She grows oyster mushrooms on chopped-down invasive weeds before the waste is turned into large, solid brown slabs – mycoblocks – that will be used, it’s hoped, to build Namibian homes.

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