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Offlineluckytriple6
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The Fungus That Could Replace Plastic
    #22113220 - 08/19/15 05:40 PM (8 years, 5 months ago)

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fungus-that-could-replace-plastic

There is a vid on the site, sry I don't know how to post it here

The Fungus That Could Replace Plastic
Written by
MOTHERBOARD
August 19, 2015 // 12:22 PM EST
Our dependence on plastics is a major environmental issue. Plastic barely degrades, and it’s filling our landfills and oceans faster than we can get rid of it. But scientists and designers have come up with a viable replacement for plastic in many of its applications: fungus.

Motherboard correspondent Alejandro Tauber traveled to Utrecht University in the Netherlands to meet some of these scientists and designers. Professor and microbiologist Han Wösten explains that due to fungi’s filament-style growth, it can grow within different waste materials, simultaneously decomposing and fortifying them. For example, grown within wood pulp, the result is something like cork.

In Zaandam, only a short drive away from Utrecht University, designer Eric Klarenbeek has already built sturdy furniture using this method. He uses a 3D printing filament made from potato starch, deliberately printing a porous model so the fungus can easily grow within. After it’s chock full of fungus, the model is baked in a drying oven, killing the fungus to keep it from growing. The inert, dried result can support the full weight of a person.

But as designer Maurizio Montalti shows Tauber, the fungus can be grown to emulate different types of plastic. There’s a more elastic, rubbery version as well as a hard, plasticlike material—both grown with the same type of fungus. So this technique could replace more than one different type of plastic.

American company Ecovative is doing just that, using fungus to replace styrofoam and plastic packaging. The benefits of this system are numerous: as well as being biodegradable, it takes up less resources and energy to produce than oil-based plastics. Ecovative founder Eben Bayer points out that plastics have their useful applications—sometimes, you don’t want something to degrade. “But packaging, it’s meant to be thrown away.”

As Tauber says, maybe we can look forward to a day where we can just toss our packing materials in the yard, without causing environmental havoc. Let’s hope that time comes sooner rather than later.


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InvisibleDr.Satan
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Re: The Fungus That Could Replace Plastic [Re: luckytriple6]
    #22113330 - 08/19/15 06:02 PM (8 years, 5 months ago)

Pretty interesting :thumbup:


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Offlinesearching
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Re: The Fungus That Could Replace Plastic [Re: Dr.Satan]
    #22113364 - 08/19/15 06:09 PM (8 years, 5 months ago)

This is a pretty awesome idea for some applications like packaging.  The only problem I see is that it takes a long time for mycelium to grow compared to in injection molding where a machine spits out a part every 15 seconds.  The result would be a very high cost compared to the plastic part. Plus the fungus would have to grow into a form or mold (3d printed in this case), you would have to have a whole lot of molds all growing mycelium all at the same time. Those molds are expensive.


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InvisibleAdden
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Re: The Fungus That Could Replace Plastic [Re: searching]
    #22113978 - 08/19/15 08:26 PM (8 years, 5 months ago)

The NSF granted them 200k, 3M has their fingers in Ecovative, and the company pulled a 700k prize in 2008.

It's an LLC, they seem to be doing well, and I'd love to get some shares but they haven't gone public yet. Unfortunately I doubt they will, and will be absorbed by 3M.

It may take the world falling apart but I'd throw some money into shares if these guys opened up.

Further research suggests these guys are some of the industry leaders. They paired up with Sealed Air (NYSE: SEE).


Sealed Air Corporation (NYSE: SEE) and Ecovative Design LLC completed an agreement to accelerate the production, sales and distribution of Ecovative’s EcoCradle® Mushroom® Packaging, a new technology for environmentally responsible packaging materials made from agricultural byproducts and mycelium, or “mushroom roots”.

SEE is up from 20 bucks to 55 bucks in the past few years. If Ecovative doesn't get bought out or absorbed it might be a good investment for the younger generation that will see a healthier world in their lifetime than I will.


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Offlinesmee
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Re: The Fungus That Could Replace Plastic [Re: Adden]
    #22125962 - 08/22/15 08:36 AM (8 years, 5 months ago)

yeah ecovative is doing some pretty cool stuff, a buddy of mine is friends with someone who has worked there since nearly the beginning. i think they have 90ish employees now which is pretty mind boggling. i know they were setting up some equipment in iowa for a sealed air plant and now they are opening a plant in troy also it looks like

i think they are growing the stuff in huge warehouse type rooms full of racks and then heating it in kilns that strongly resemble shipping containers

i did hear a few years ago that even with the sealed air deal they were still pretty much running on grant money and that the industry as a whole was not greedily buying up their products quickly enough, its entirely possible this has changed for the better though.


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