Product designer Eben Bayer reveals his recipe for a new, fungus-based packaging material that protects fragile stuff like furniture, plasma screens -- and the environment.
Have you watched the video yet? If not go watch it before reading the blog.
Ok now that’s out of the way let’s talk about this. First of all I want everyone to know I'm about the furthest away from being a tree hugger that you could possibly be. I don’t drive a prius, still love them plastic bags they give away with my groceries at the store, and don't care how many miles per gallon my Hummer gets, because I sure look good in it.
But Styrofoam, now I hate that stuff! As the Father of 5 boys Christmas around here means a lot of presents under the tree. But along with that comes all the Styrofoam used in protecting those delicate little toys packed inside. It never fails to amaze me that after unwrapping all those presents is that if you stack all those toys next to the Styrofoam packaging that they come in; the stack of Styrofoam will be about 5 times higher than the stack of toys. Now boys being boys, would much rather play with the Styrofoam than the toys I just spent my paycheck on. Next thing you know, it starts looking more and more like a white Christmas around my living room. While I'm wondering how many weeks of trash pickup it’s going to take to get rid of all this crap, the wife is pissed because she has to clean up all the new snow that has “magically” accumulated around the house.
So it sounds like this is great stuff this guy has come up with. As I was watching this video I’m thinking wow, next Christmas is going to be so much better. Instead of me worrying about the months of trying to cram this crap into the trash can I'm thinking just kick it out the back door and let the rain take care of it. Even better we could probably just stuff the Christmas turkey with it and save the wife a few hours of preparation time. Probably freeze it and save it for thanksgiving too.
Ok, I'm not quite that bad, but pretty close. When I saw this the first thing I thought was here goes the price of mushrooms at the local grocery. Just like the use of ethanol gasoline is causing a shortage of corn and causing the price of it to go up. But this uses waste products from the plant, something that was just going to rot away anyhow. The first time through the video I had a understanding exactly how this process takes place. But after watching it again, with the pause button close at hand and a little research on the internet, it sounds like we just may have the answer to one of our big problems in America. First of all for you folks like me who have a hard time with words longer than one syllable let me provide you with a couple of definitions.
The first big word I had problems with was mycelium, so I pulled out my pocket electronic dictionary and popped that word in: it told me that mycelium "is the vegative part of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching threadlike hyphae. A mass of fibers formed by certain bacteria." I hate it when I have to look up a word in the definition of the word I'm trying to figure out but there is was "hyphae". So I punch that new word into my electronic pocket dictionary and guess what? It doesn’t know the definition either. Imagine that it uses the word in a definition and it doesn’t even know what it's talking about. Sounds like a lot of college students I know. So off to the web in search of hyphae and at (http://www.backyardnature.net/f/funghyph.htm) they give a pretty good explanation. I read the whole thing but to sum it up its "the part of the fungus that feeds grows and ultimately may produce a mushroom or some other kind of reproductive structure." Ah ha, so this is the stuff that holds the waste product from the mushrooms together once it’s allowed to grow. So now I'm starting to understand how this stuff works, but of course he has to throw another one of those big words out at me, "polymers". Now I've heard this word before, but wasn't quite sure what it meant so me and Google got together and I went searching this is what I found at (http://www.yourdictionary.com/polymer): Any of numerous natural and synthetic compounds of usually high molecular weight consisting of up to millions of repeated linked units, each a relatively light and simple molecule.
So really why did I find this so interesting? I really was a bit skeptical at first, not really understanding the entire process. He sure made it sound like a great idea, but I've watched enough late night infomercials to know you can't accept everything you hear. But after a little research and really understanding what he was talking about, it sounds like he may have come up with something this country could really use, biodegradable Styrofoam.
And the real savings: for every cubic foot of Styrofoam not produced.... 1.5 more liters of petro for my Hummer.
