Toadstool footstools: Are organisms future of manufacturing?
green island (new york) — The sturdy stools and spongy cushions made at an upstate New York factory are formed with fungus.
Ecovative Design is a business staking its growth on mycelium, the thread-like “roots” of mushrooms. The mycelium grows around small pieces of stalks and stems to create a bound-together material that can be molded into soft packaging for glassware or pressed into the boards used for the footstools they recently began selling.
“It’s like growing a tree in the shape of your furniture,” said Ecovative co-founder Gavin McIntyre. “But rather than a tree, we’re using mushrooms.”
The simple stools are organic markers in ambitious efforts by researchers worldwide to commercially grow fungi, bacteria and proteins into clothing and building materials. Proponents see microorganisms as factories of the future, displacing energy-intensive manufacturing with more sustainable models.
While the young grow-it-all field is still more about promise than actual products, companies are working on making bricks without kilns, leather without cows and silk without spiders. McIntyre rapped his knuckles on one of their “mycoboards,” which look and feel similar to the particle boards that are commonplace in cabinets and bigbox store furniture. He was on the floor of Ecovative’s hangar-like fa- cility north of Albany where chopped-up farm stuff is steamed and bagged up with mycelium.
Stacked on high-rise racks, the minuscule white mycelium threads feed on the stalks and woody bits, binding it together. After a week or so, the big clear plastic bags look little like giant pieces of frosted shredded wheat.
“The fungus is literally self-assembling,” McIntyre said.
McIntyre and Ecovative cofounder Eben Bayer have been harnessing mushroom power since they were Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students growing fungus under their beds for a class project a decade ago. Today, they employ about 90 people in a business that found initial success selling a compostable alternative to plastic foams used for packaging items like computers and glass bottles. But Bayer and McIntyre always believed mycelium to be more multifaceted. They figured out a way to create boards by adding heat and pressure and how to make flexible cushions.