In the not-so-distant future, man’s gluttony for all things petrochemical will involuntarily end, forcing us to find alternatives to, well, just about all that we do, from how we heat our homes, to how we power our cars, and how to make everything we use — right down to this keyboard that I’m typing on. That’s the trouble with having an over-reliance on a single, finite source of energy.  We have exploited it beyond comprehension and with it we have compromised our health, the health of our planet and the future of our existence.

It takes a massive amount of money and unrenewable energy to feed our estimated 300-million ton appetite of plastics consumed globally each year. About $20 billion dollars worth is spent on the creation and manufacture of the 5.5 million tons of expanded polystyrene (EPS) alone, used for such things as packaging, building products, insulation, and consumer goods. In our own short-sighted way, we conveniently cite the benefits of EPS rather than reflect on their long-term downsides, and polystyrene’s brief, benzene-producing life (a known carcinogen) typically ends up out of sight and out of mind — buried in a mountain of garbage somewhere, eternally occupying as much as 25% of a landfill’s overall mass. Consumer guilt results in an approximately 10% recycle rate, requiring yet more energy and more money to convert it into something else useful before it ultimately and permanently ends up in a garbage heap.

In a perfect — yet admittedly inconceivable — post-petroleum world, wouldn’t it be nice if we could create high quality consumable packaging materials from waste products using a wide variety of organic, renewable, seemingly useless agricultural junk from anywhere around the world, like rice husks or cottonseed hulls, and by applying little or no energy to them, rely on nature to “grow” these products for us instead? Better yet, all this consumable packaging would be completely biodegradable, create no harmful gasses, byproducts, or leachable or extractible compounds. Instead they would return to the earth and enrich and regenerate the soil — like falling leaves on the forest floor.

This is no alternate reality or B-movie science fiction plot: it’s already happening! It’s the dream of Eban Bayer, chief executive officer of an innovative little company called Ecovative (ecovativedesign.com) aptly situated on “Green Island” in the middle of the Hudson River among the tie-dyed and Berkenstocks crowd in upstate New York. Mr. Bayer and his team don’t actually make packaging — they grow it, with the help of mushrooms. Unlike traditional bioplastics whose feedstocks are typically food crops, Ecovative upcycles low value agricultural junk like plant stalks and seed husks, and inoculates them with mycelium, a fungal “root” network of threadlike cells.

Like a blob of shredded garden compost, the feedstock is loaded and locked into a form (like a baking dish), and set aside for five to seven days. Then the magic happens. In the dark, and with no watering and no petrochemical inputs, the mycelium digest the agricultural byproducts, binding them into a solid structure. The mycelium act like natural, self-assembling glue. By using a broad range of feedstocks the developers are able to create diverse material properties, and tune their mushroom mixtures to adjust the density, strength, texture, appearance and performance characteristics of the materials they grow.

How it works

• Truckloads of agricultural byproducts that cannot be used for food or feed — and therefore have limited or no economic value — arrive from local farms. Utilizing only renewable, regional raw materials and low-tech manufacturing makes this an attractive solution adaptable to all regions of the world and may be of particular interest to those in developing countries.
• Several types of farm waste are stored in large hoppers and then mixed in different ratios to meet specified material properties. A patented continuous steam pasteurization process cleans and prepares the blend of agricultural byproducts, ridding them of any mold or bacterial contamination that may have come from the field.
• The pasteurized substrate is inoculated with mycelium, like planting the mushroom tissue. There are never any spores involved. This inoculated mixture is filled evenly into forms and loaded into pallet racks.
• Then, nature’s proven multi-billion-year R&D process takes over. The mycelium grow rapidly, typically in less than a week, indoors, at ambient temperatures and ambient atmospheric pressure, and without the need for water, light, or human intervention. The mycelium do what mycelium have always done — they self-assemble by digesting the lignin and cellulose from the organic plant material to which they are attached, lengthening and expanding into a strong bio-composite until every nook and cranny of the mold forms are filled. Every cubic inch of material contains a matrix of eight miles of tiny mycelial fibers!
• At the end of the process, the materials are popped out of their molds and put through a dehydration and heat-treating process to deactivate their growth. This final process ensures that there will never be any spores or allergen concerns and the finished parts are shipped to the customer.

From beginning to end, the process aligns with nature’s recycling system. Composting, mulching, or land-filling the packaging made from this process are all environmentally sound options of disposal because the packaging is made of natural materials that belong in a healthy ecosystem. Even when plastic packaging is recycled (and it seldom is), the polymers degrade and are “down-cycled” into lower grade materials. Many bio-plastics have come under criticism because they require high temperature conditions found only in industrial composting facilities to break down. There is limited industrial composting capacity, and many of these facilities do not accept bio-plastics. Mycelium packaging is home-compostable, breaking down safely right in your own garden, and can be used to replace current EPS, EPP and EPE plastics.

Current applications for this technology extend to structural insulated panels for buildings, acoustical tile, and protective packaging, as they contain similar R value and cushioning properties as their EPS counterparts, and are Class 1 fire rated. They also make a wine shipper (my personal favorite). Under development is a replacement for engineered wood, including particleboard and fiberboard. Mycelium is able to bind to natural and synthetic textiles such as burlap, hemp, jute, wood veneers, fiberglass, and carbon fiber, adhering naturally instead of using volatile chemical resins. In some cases, set times are less than 24 hours to reach full adhesion, which is comparable to polyurethane glues.

Structural composites grown using Ecovative’s technology could soon be used to produce surfboards, furniture, and lightweight vehicle panels.

I’m waiting to see who will be the first to use it as an insulated passive shipper. 

References

1. Data from Polystyrene Packaging Council (PSPC).

---

Kevin O’Donnell is senior partner at Exelsius Cold Chain Management Consultancy – U.S. He is the former chair for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Time & Temperature Task Force, a member of the USP Expert Committee on Packaging, Storage and Distribution, a temporary advisor and certified mentor to the World Health Organization (WHO), co-author of PDA Technical Report No. 39, and a member of the International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) Thermal Council. He blogs at www.clutchcargo.us. He can be reached at kevin.odonnell@exelsius.us.