Replacing Styrofoam With Fungi, But Can It Scale?

Replacing Styrofoam With Fungi, But Can It Scale?

Now, the company he founded with classmate Gavin McIntyre -- Ecovative Design -- is angling to provide not just a mass-market, organic insulation material, but also a replacement for Styrofoam, the non-biodegradable, carbon-intense material used widely in packing and shipping.

Both are both produced through microbinding, in which local agricultural waste -- including buckwheat, rice and cottonseed hulls and other materials high in lignin, a complex organic polymer found in many plants -- is mixed with cells from a specific type of fungi.

Within about a week, Mr. Bayer said, the fungus digests the lignin, producing a strong biological matrix. The mixture is poured into a mold and then dehydrated, creating the finished product.

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