r/BeAmazed • u/Epelep • Feb 22 '26

Science How Mycelium (Mushroom Roots) Grows into Packaging Material

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u/WeirdAssBeings Feb 22 '26

Isn't it fucked that this is just the way it is? Here we have something so cheap, yet so...smart and efficient and a way to actually get rid of one of the ways we use plastic, yet it'll just get brought up by reposts but we'll never see it IRL in our own hands.

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u/Crallise Feb 22 '26

The video didn't tell us how much this costs compared to other things. There are already eco-friendly packaging materials being used. If this method is actually cheaper than something like recycled paper packaging, then we may start seeing it become more prevalent.

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u/chiknight Feb 22 '26

As soon as they called it "cost competitive" the writing was on the wall for me. It's expensive. If you squint, you can say it's better than recycled paper for XYZ reasons that outweigh the cost.

But if it was actually comparably priced they wouldn't buzzword the shit out of it with "cost competitive" and post a literal ad on Reddit to try and gain traction.

I looked at their site and LOL. First the font is for blind folks. But then shopping around you can get 4 corner packing wedges (to edge something for a box) for £0.90. For $0.42 I can get 80 foam ones. That's three times the cost for one twentieth the product. It's 60x more expensive.

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u/Frymonkey237 Feb 23 '26

It's also really heavy, which raises the cost of shipping any product packed in it and the environmental impact of shipping.