New Mushroom-Based Packaging Could Replace Styrofoam

A New York company called Ecovative Design has created a compostable alternative to compete with the expanded polystyrene industry without ecological or economic compromises.

Polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) is a light-weight material, made of mostly air, that has very good insulation properties and is used in all types of products, including packaging materials. Unfortunately, polystyrene is made with petroleum, a non-sustainable and heavily polluting resource.

From the Ecovative website:

“EcoCradle™ packaging is literally grown, not manufactured. We use a growing organism to transform agricultural byproducts like cotton seed hulls and buck wheat hulls into a beautiful protective package. Our patented process is inspired by the efficiency of nature, and uses a filamentous fungi (mushroom roots) to bond this packaging into almost any shape.”

This packaging alternative is produced without petroleum or light, requires no significant heat, is non-allergenic, and is less expensive to produce than foam products.

Check out this video about how the company hopes to stop global warming by growing styrofoam with fungi!

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Meg G.

5:02PM PST on Jan 6, 2012

Brilliant. Now if there are any genius business planners, markerters, advertisers, patent lawyers, testers and researchers on this site it would be even more brilliant if you could make sure that this product reachs the world.
I have seen and heard of to many enviro products that just don't make it financially due to the inventors being inventors and not business people. We all have specialties and being able to use them to support each other is what I feel life is about.