Who makes it: Ecovative Design
To most people, fungus is far from welcome inside their walls. The folks from Ecovative Design want to change that — for them, it’s a building material.
Specifically, Ecovative Design uses mushroom roots to make its Greensulate rigid insulation and EcoCradle packaging material.
“It turns out you can do some pretty remarkable things with fungi,” said Sam Harrington, the company’s marketing chief.
In its Green Island, N.Y., facility, which Harrington describes as a cross between a factory and a mushroom farm, the company introduces mushroom roots into agricultural byproducts like rice hulls. In five to 10 days, the growing fungus turns the byproducts into a rigid Styrofoam-like material that’s biodegradable and nontoxic and can be used in place of conventional rigid insulation.
“It’s more than a new product,” Harrington says. “We’re not making materials — we’re growing materials.”
That’s what Sustainable Industries’ panel of judges liked about the product as well.
“I like the idea that they’re using a natural product to perform the same things that we’re using manufactured products for,” said one judge.
Plus, what Harrington calls the “natural self-assembly” process of the product means it has an energy-efficient production process ¬– the fungus grows in the dark at room temperature and must be heated only in the final drying process.
The idea of intentionally putting fungus into a building may give some people pause, but Ecovative’s heat-treating process renders the material inert, or “as dead a 2×4,” according to Harrington.
One drawback, though: You can’t buy Greensulate just yet. Ecovative, which has won federal and state grants to develop its product, is still in the testing phase for its insulation. It plans to produce Greensulate in 4-foot-by-8-foot sheets of varying thicknesses, with another design to fit in structural insulating panels. Its EcoCradle packaging is being used for several thousand products, including by office-furniture maker Steelcase.
