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Name: Ecovative EcoCradle Mushroom Packaging
Big Idea: To replace polystyrene packaging with a compostable alternative made from agricultural waste and bio materials.
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Why It's Working: Ecovative's disruptive technology could make a huge impact on the amount of polystyrene packaging that ends up in landfill. Plus, it won't cost businesses any more money to adopt it at scale.
Dell has offered environmentally-friendly bamboo-based packaging since 2009, but is now experimenting with an even faster renewable -- mushroom. The manufacturer is currently running a high-volume pilot scheme with a Fortune 50 company to supply the Dell PowerEdge R710 server multipacks safely encased in packaging that has been grown, rather than manufactured.
The company that grows it, Ecovative, is a New York-based start-up founded in 2007 by two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduates, Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre. Bayer says that he and McIntyre realized that styrofoam was a pain for both consumers and the environment, so they began creating their own alternative packaging product.
"Over the last three years, Ecovative has built -- from the ground up -- a new kind of packaging based around the mushroom technology, and we've been really successful in getting companies like Dell to start shipping with this product," Bayer adds.
Dell and mushrooms might not seem to go hand-in-hand, but the theory behind the partnership is core to Dell's environmental philosophy, and very much customer-inspired. Oliver Campbell, Dell's director of procurement for packaging, explains that he found consumers' dislike for styrofoam packaging five years ago. For consumers, Campbell says, the main desires were clear:
"They came back with three major things. They wanted the packaging to be smaller, they wanted us to use more sustainable content and they wanted to have a way to responsibly dispose of the packaging in an eco-friendly manner," he says.
And mushrooms are the bleeding edge of green packaging. Utilizing agricultural waste, cotton hulls are placed in a mold and then injected with the root structure of a mushroom -- its mycelium. The mycelium root then feeds off of the agricultural waste slowly until it's ready to become packaging. This material, when received by a customer, can actually be planted back into the ground and used as composted fertilizer for gardens.
"Our value proposition to the customer is that we're going to give you the same performance at the same price as polystyrene, but we're going to create a product that isn't trash when it arrives at your house, it's actually a nutrient for the environment," says Bayer.
So far, so green. But does the mushroom packaging perform as well as traditional materials?
"We were pleasantly surprised when we did our packaging tests in the lab, as it actually performed better in drop protection than our standard foam cushions do," Campbell told us.
If the pilot scheme is successful, the mushroom packaging could play a part in helping Dell reach its ambitious environmental targets. And Dell is not the only potentially happy Ecovative customer. PUMA is using EcoCradle to package its "Laird" stand-up paddleboard, and Crate & Barrel ships furniture safely encased in the product -- and even more companies are jumping on the mushroom train.
With plans to make a plethora of other products using the EcoCradle technology -- from flip-flop soles to car bumpers -- Ecovative has an exciting future in many areas of manufacturing -- not just the packaging arena.
"Our goal really is to be disruptive, to change the industrial supply chain and how we make things," says Bayer. "Our goal is to replicate what we've done successfully in packaging in all the markets that use disposable plastics."
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This story originally published on Mashable here.
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