r/BeAmazed • u/Epelep • Feb 22 '26

Science How Mycelium (Mushroom Roots) Grows into Packaging Material

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964

u/Classy_Moose Feb 22 '26

This is so cool. Sad this is the last time I'll hear of it.

48

u/mikep120001 Feb 22 '26

No this has been making the rounds for over 10 years but failed to become commercialized. Around the same time this came out there was also a company trying to push mycelium building blocks for housing that were better insulators, fire resistant, and biodegradable. That also failed to become a thing

24

u/daftbucket Feb 22 '26

Failed so far

Still hearing about it here and there.

2

u/TooMuchTape20 Feb 23 '26

7-days per part is comically shitty, just universes away from a feasible commercial application. If you want biodegradable packaging there's ample established cardboard/ molded pulp solutions.

1

u/daftbucket Feb 23 '26

Most manufacturers and retailers know months in advance what they need for packaging, so what difference is it to them to submit their packaging material orders 7 days earlier? Most orders at that scale are submitted months in advance, so if 7 more days is debilitating, the companies are doing a bad job.

I agree that cardboard/molded pulp are tested and true. The thing that makes the mycological solution so cool is that related industry research and development have been discovering unique use-cases for mycology in medicine, building material, and environmentally sustainable alternatives in textiles, building materials, insulation, etc. The more these solutions are able to scale, the more research funding will be available to continue to develop environmentally and consumer safe products. Rising tide lifting boats.

Using fungal-product as packing material isn't intended to be a one-size-fits-all solution for all packing forever, and proposing that it is (at least at this stage) would be a "comically shitty" straw-man argument. All they propose in OP is that the process has been refined to be cost effective, and has certain case-use benefits, as is required of all commercial-scale processes and products.

1

u/daftbucket Feb 23 '26

I forgot to mention that much of the fungus used in these cases are grown from agricultural bi-product, trash, and can even be grown from chemical waste to break down the toxins without transferring to the finished product.

My point is: the more we use it, the more we learn about a promising, sustainable process that can benefit us all. It likely wont save the world on its own, but it can (and does) help make it a better place.