Ecovative Design – A Startup Providing Sustainable Alternatives To Plastic

The world is becoming energy conscious and is constantly looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions and carbon footprints and shift to sustainable and renewable energy practices.  Plastic is a bane to the environment, owing to its ability to adversely affect ecosystems and inability to decompose once it reaches a landfill or the environment. Single use plastics are a major contributor to this problem.  A company called Ecovative Design is slowly trying to develop an alternative to plastics by making packaging material and various other products from mushrooms, which are a type of fungus.  Ecovative Design was founded by Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre and is based out of Green Island, New York.

The beginning

Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre worked on their idea as a part of their university project during an Inventor’s Studio course at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  They initially developed and created an insulation material using this mycelium technology and named it Greensulate. They followed this up by founding Ecovative Design.  After winning $ 700,000 at an event called the Picnic Green Challenge, they went commercial by making a protective packaging called EcoCradle.

Raw materials

The founders claim they were inspired by observing how the fungal mycelium strongly bonded with wood chips.  They realised they could use this resinous property to create a product which essentially left zero carbon footprint and is totally safe since it is organic.  They chose a special strain of fungus which they left at a place for about five days, where the fungal mycelium bonded with non food agricultural materials and created organic compostable material.  They finally heated the product to make the fungus inert. This material was then placed in moulds so it could be shaped into the requirements of the product. The founders developed products which can be used in insulation, protective packaging and structural biocomposites.

It is the aim of the founders that once the use of mycelium grown products gain household acceptance, they can replace the use of plastic and polystyrene.  This technology is being studied by other companies who rely on mycelium technology and can incorporate it into their product design. Ecovative Design has a revenue model wherein they license their technology and offer it to interested vendors.  Companies like Ikea and Dell use their protective packaging when they ship their products.

With Ecovative Design currently researching and creating products which cater to the apparel, food, textile and skincare industries, it will be interesting to see how these products replace non biodegradable products in the future.