Styrofoam makes up 25 percent
of our landfills in the U.S.
That is insane.
We may only use it for a day or a week
to ship a package, but it stays in our environment
for thousands of years.
I think I've come up with an alternative.
When I was an engineering student in college,
we were trying to come up with a new type of glue.
And I remembered something from when
I was a kid growing up on a farm.
My job was to get to the top of the
pile of wood chips
and kick them down to the bottom
so my dad could bucket them up with a tractor.
I remember looking down at my feet
at all those wood chips and I saw something that
looked like spider webs holding the wood together.
But they weren’t spider webs.
It was something called mycelium –
the root system of a fungus.
Every time I look to nature,
I see a complex system that we can learn from.
Why not use the technology that nature
has already developed over millions of years?
We could use this natural glue
for the basis of a new packaging material
to replace Styrofoam.
First, we add mycelium to ground up waste
like wood chips or cornhusks,
then we pour
the mixture into a mold.
After just a few days,
the mycelium locks everything into place.
It doesn't require energy to make,
and there's no leftover waste.
We can mold it into any shape,
it holds its form, and it's lightweight.
That's what makes mycelium technology
a good alternative to Styrofoam.
After you're done with it,
you can throw it into the lake and it’s fish food;
you can throw it into your garden
and grow healthy plants.
The most important thing is:
Our packaging fits into
Earth's recycling system.
