How Mushrooms Are Turned Into Bacon And Styrofoam | World Wide Waste

it looks like a giant marshmallow but it's actually a mushroom slice it and you get crispy vegan bacon or a convincing alternative to leather and this lab grows an eco-friendly replacement to styrofoam that light but bulky material taking up a third of the space in all landfills but can this company grow it fast enough to make a global impact we visited ecovative's headquarters in green island new york to find out the magic is in mycelium the living root structures of mushrooms our entire philosophy is actually based around this idea that nature provides missilium is a great solution to both the plastics waste problem we face as well as animal agriculture i'm taking the mushroom mycelium and then i'm just going to section this petri dish all ecovative products start with these natural building blocks we have about 100 different strains in-house and we will analyze those for the different material properties that they have what do you think about the wall thickness on this it's pretty thin the company's best selling product is called mico composite it has similar properties to styrofoam but it's completely biodegradable we've worked with a variety of companies some of them huge companies like dell computers where they've used our earth friendly packaging to ship servers we've worked also with small new york startup brands like keep candles [Music] manufacturers design molds using large recyclable plastic sheets heat makes the sheets pliable so they can be shaped around any product they start with wood chips corn husks or hemp that would otherwise be thrown out by local farms then sprinkle in some fungal spores and add water pack the mixture into the molds and the mycelium starts to grow feeding on the shredded agricultural waste just over a week later the form-fitted mold is ready to ship so this jar and it fits really nice in there the final material is a little bit heavier than styrofoam but velvety soft to the touch this packaging breaks down in just 30 days conventional styrofoam never really goes away it can stay in the environment for up to five centuries and less than one percent is ever recycled ecovative has a different process to make vegan meat and leather which it claims consumes far fewer resources than the real thing then we're going to take this substrate which will inoculate this sawdust workers still start with agricultural waste and spores but these mixtures are placed in vertical farms growth chambers that mimic the conditions of natural soil and so what it's really trying to do is grow up and punch out through the earth to form a mushroom but we keep the environment such that it just grows and grows into this large marshmallow-like structure that marshmallow is called ariel mycelium and it grows over the course of about 10 days their largest chamber can produce up to 200 000 pounds of mycelium per year we end up with these large industrial slabs which can be like 50 feet long and 5 feet wide and a couple inches thick in 2018 the company licensed its leather making process to bolt threads they make milo a leather alternative that has been used in clothing and handbags in 2020 the company launched a line of mushroom-based meat alternatives called my eats the mai is short for mycelium the first product is called my bacon it's made from ariel mycelium that's cut into slices compressed and seasoned it fries up and gets crispy just like bacon and tastes pretty amazing too we can't confirm the flavor but my bacon is definitely a healthier option it's high in fiber and has the same protein content as a regular slice of bacon with one-fifth the fat the company projects that as it scales up my bacon can eventually be grown for a dollar per pound a fifth of the market price of pork bacon and it takes nearly 600 gallons of water to produce one pound of pork but just over one gallon of water to grow a pound of mycelium bacon bayer and gavin mcintyre founded ecovative design in 2007 and debuted their myco composite packaging in 2011. since then a growing number of cities and states have banned the use of styrofoam but the united states does not have country-wide restrictions and the average person still uses 75 foam coffee cups per year adding up to 25 billion in 2020 ecovative produced over 6 million pounds of its foam alternative but that's just half a percent of the cups americans consumed my bacon might have an easier time catching on the market for meat substitutes is worth about four billion dollars and is set to double over the next five years bacon is a really important leverage point in the market it's one of the number one reasons people say they won't stop eating meat mycelium protein can mimic whole cuts of meat as opposed to most other plant-based alternatives which come in the form of minced patties or sausages but right now my bacon is only available in one grocery store in albany new york ecovative plans on branching out to more stores in 2021 and it's currently building farms with the capacity to produce 1 million pounds of mycelium per year the company recently announced it's raised a total of 100 million dollars in capital compare that with impossible foods a more established brand which has raised 700 million dollars to date ecovative design is a long way from displacing plastics and factory farming but according to eben his company is harnessing the potential of the living world my background and journey has been around figuring out how we can reimagine working with nature and using nature to create better solutions for everyday products we we have to use as humans that just have less impact on the earth you

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 3,068,081

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, world wide waste, environment, recycle, agriculture, nature, farming, mushroom, vegan, small business, company, animals, sytrofoam

Id: uznXI8wrdag

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/mojomonkeyfish]

So, what you're saying is, I can get my next phone packed in hickory flavored styrofoam, and packed in a box with potato starch peanuts. We're getting dangerously close to a complete meal.

[u/RollingTater]

Wait hold up it takes a week to make a set of that packaging?

I thought they would have a big batch of mushroom that they'd harvest and compress into a few molds, but instead they're growing the packaging directly into the molds over a week? That doesn't sound very scalable at all.

And I wonder how much of that packaging is still made of wood chips. Like if you just glue wood chips together do you get similar properties?

[u/Myte342]

I am not a bleeding heart tree hugger... but even I can see that single use plastics and styrofoams are killing the planet. I would not be against any gov't telling companies that plastic packaging and styrofoams will be (largely) banned in 10 years so they better invest in alternatives like this and figure it out.

I can see plastics may be needed still for some specific uses (certain chemicals or food preservation on the shelf to some extent) but this can be replaced with Glass to large extent to greatly reduce their use.

[u/Psyopsss]

The average person still uses 75 foam coffee cups per year

What? Where can you even still get coffee in a styrofoam cup?

[u/sciolycaptain]

"We can't confirm the flavor (of the fake bacon)". Thanks guys, really useful info there.

[u/PSNDonutDude]

The amount of hate here is so weird. I love meat, but I'm excited by the more sustainable and healthier options coming to market. Vegan diets are undoubtedly better for you, and better for the planet, but vegan foods have to taste as good or better than meat before I or many others will eat them with any regularity. I just love meat, though I've noticed that now that I eat more well cooked veggies I'm eating less meat.

[u/Crepti]

"Slice it and you get crispy vegan bacon".

No, you get mushroom.

[u/BelCantoTenor]

A step in the right direction

[u/Joker-Smurf]

It seems like a good idea, but: * Packaging takes a week to grow * Begins to degrade in just 30 days

This leaves a very small window for product to be packaged and shipped to the final destination. It would not be feasible in any shipping (as in container ship) solutions and would only be viable for airfreight, truck, train. It also means that it would not be suitable for bricks & mortar locations. It would need to either: * Delivered direct from manufacturer to end user, or * Be used as supplementary packaging for retail stores along side traditional styrofoam packaging (think one big carton with this and a handful of small inner cartons each having little to no packaging requirement)

Is the mushroom still alive? Is there a risk for pests to feed off of it, therefore shipping pest species around the world?

What are the quarantine requirements for the material around the world? Is it able to even be shipped to every country?