Thursday, July 29, 2010

Mushrooms being used in shipping packaging

A new product made out of agricultural waste and mushroom roots is now showing up in shipped products across the country. The composite material, called Mycobond™, requires just one-eighth the energy to produce and generates one-tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material.

Now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergraduates Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer are developing a new, less energy-intensive method to sterilize the agricultural waste, killing spores that could otherwise compete with the mushrooms.

Here's how the green product grows: The mycelia (vegetative part of a fungus, like a mushroom) grow around and digest agricultural starter material, such as cotton seed or wood fiber in a dark environment at room temperature. The materials are shaped by a customized, molded plastic structure in which they grow.

Once fully formed, each piece goes through the sterilization process. With the new cinnamon-bark treatment, Bayer and McIntyre hope the entire process can be packaged as a kit, allowing shipping facilities, and even homeowners, to grow their own green packaging materials.

-Christian Science Monitor

For the full story: www.csmonitor.com

More Techwire stories

SSA fleshes out the zero emission terminal

IBM to develop infrastructure-monitoring software

Food supply chain software vendor being sold for $525 mil

China denies it forces technology handovers for market entrance

Click to browse past stories on the

se topics:

Logistics

Ports & Infrastructure

Economic Outlook

Environmental Impact

Technology