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Environmentally friendly insulation and packaging material
Going Green
Going Green: Environmentally friendly insulation and packaging material
A new company, headquartered in Troy, New York, is going green with environmentally friendly insulation and packaging material made with mushrooms.
“At Ecovative, we're creating Acorn Packaging which is a replacement for the typical expanded polystyrene that you find around your packages that lasts forever and is made from petroleum. Our packaging material is sustainable, it's renewable, and when you're done using it you can throw it in your garden and compost it,” said Eben Bayer, Ecovative Design, CEO.
It's biodegradable because it's made from agricultural waste products like cotton burrs, buckwheat hulls, and rice hulls.
Their other product is called Greensulate that can replace pink board or fiberglass insulation.
“To create Greensulate, what we do is we take loose fill agricultural particles (like rice hulls) and we grow fungal mysillium, mushroom roots, so the roots grow and digest some of the agricultural particles while bonding others together. At the end of the process, we dry it. This renders the material biological inactive,” said Gavin McIntyre, Ecovative Design Chief Scientist.
Going Green: Environmentally friendly insulation and packaging material A new company, headquartered in Troy, New York, is going green with environmentally friendly insulation and packaging material made with mushrooms. Terry Ettinger has more. Company officials claim the cost of production is lower than for polystyrene and there is minimal environmental impact.
“We are able to do this because we use an organic process. Our material is actually grown using a living organism so we need very little energy input into our process. It happens at room temperature, room pressure, and in the dark. It's grown just like a two by four is grown,” said Ed Browka, Ecovative Design COO.
They've been written up in Scientific American. They've made their case on You Tube, so what's next?
“We're looking for partners in the capital region to start shipping in this product this year. It's very good for shipping fragile, heavy items,” said Bayer.
