[Greenbuilding] Insulation from mushrooms?

[Tom Lent]

These guys give me great hope. http://www.ecovativedesign.com/greensulate/
They claim the product uses much less energy & oil, no need for PBT flame
retardants and ozone depleting or global warming gas blowing agents, is zero
waste, totally derived from a wide variety of ag wastes (plus mushroom
mycelium), totally compostable at the end of life and will not end up
further clogging the Pacific Gyre (at least not for long). They've already
demonstrated a class 1 fire rating and passed a battery of ASTM tests for
mold growth, water sorption, and vapor transmission. R per inch is 3. Not
spectacular, but I'll gladly trade off some extra thickness to get the rest
of the advantages. 

 

They're focusing on getting their manufacturing and distribution chops down
through working with the packaging material application this year before
moving into production of the larger sizes required for building insulation
(the EcoCradle packaging material is essentially the same material and
manufacturing techniques). They hope to be selling at least limited
commercial quantities of Greensulate and do some more test projects towards
the end of 2011. 

 

I'm looking forward to it.

 

Check out Eben's talk on TED

http://www.ted.com/talks/eben_bayer_are_mushrooms_the_new_plastic.html 

 

- Tom

  _____  

From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Lisa &
Paul Brown
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 10:30 AM
To: VanGendt.Saskia at epamail.epa.gov
Cc: greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Insulation from mushrooms?

 

Steelcase has reported that they are using the mushroom derived material as
a substitute for polystyrene padding.

 

The story was in Environmental News a while back.

 

Paul Brown

LEED AP

Compass LLC

 

On Oct 18, 2010, at 12:23 PM, VanGendt.Saskia at epamail.epa.gov wrote:





Has anyone seen this insulation made from agriculture waste and mushrooms?
They also created a substitute for expanded polystyrene ("Styrofoam").
Please let me know if you've used this product or have additional
information. 
Thanks!
Saskia 

http://www.ecovativedesign.com/ 
http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-10-07-harnessing-mushrooms-to-replace
-plastic-video/?ref=se 
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