Every year, more than 530 million tons of construction and demolition waste like timber, concrete, and asphalt end up in landfills in the U.S.–about double the amount of waste picked up by garbage trucks every year from homes, businesses, and institutions. But what if all of the material used in buildings and other structures could be recycled into a new type of construction material?

That’s what the Cleveland-based architecture firm Redhouse Studio is trying to do. The firm, led by architect Christopher Maurer, has developed a biological process to turn wood scraps and other kinds of construction waste like sheathing, flooring, and organic insulation into a new, brick-like building material.

Maurer wants to use the waste materials from the thousands of homes in Cleveland that have been demolished over the last decade or so as a source to create this new biomaterial. Now, the firm has launched a Kickstarter to transform an old shipping container into a mobile lab called the Biocycler, which Maurer and his team can drive to these demolished homes and begin the process of turning their waste into materials to build new walls.

If the project is funded, Maurer hopes to use the lab to build an agricultural building for the nonprofit Refugee Response, which puts refugees in the Cleveland area to work on an urban farm.

The biological process entails using the binding properties of the organisms that create mushrooms, called mycelium. Once the waste is combined with the mycelium, it is put into brick-shaped forms, where it stews for days or weeks, depending on how much mycelium is added. When bound together into biomaterial, the material has the consistency of rigid insulation. Then the team compacts them to make them sturdy enough to be used as a structural material.

The building for Refugee Response will act as a proof of concept, as Maurer hopes to eventually be able to help people in disaster-stricken areas using the technique. An added bonus? When allowed to grow, the mycelium will flower and mushrooms will sprout, creating a source of food that could also be helpful for humanitarian reasons.

Maurer has experimented with mycelium for years–and he isn’t alone, as startups and architects alike are also focusing on the stuff. He admits that it is a somewhat magical process: After turning an organic material like wood chips into sawdust and pasteurizing it to remove any organisms, a small amount of mycelium is added. Without any other life to challenge it, the mycelium grows like crazy. It secretes enzymes that dissolve the cellulose in the wood and replaces the cellulose with its own organisms, which are full of chitin–a material found in the exoskeletons of crustaceans and shells that happens to be the strongest natural polymer that exists. “The composite of the woody and polymetric mass is great building material–strong and rigid but also flexible, based on how much you compact it,” Maurer says.