The Ecovative Team from left to right: Ed Browka, Gavin McIntyre, and Eben Bayer Ed Browka
- great team photo The Ecovative Team from left to right: Ed Browka, Gavin McIntyre, and Eben Bayer Ed Browka
- eben with a sample photo Eben with a sample of MycoPly material Tim Calabro
- blocks of greensulate photo Samples of Greensulate Tim Calabro
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The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) combined with the support of the Lemelson Foundation provides $1.5 million to student and faculty programs and ventures annually, such as for today's featured inventive idea, Greensulate insulation and Negative Volume packaging, by Ecovative Design LLC.
The idea behind Ecovative Design is to find new ways to insulate buildings and package material goods without the traditional use of petroleum based polystyrene/Styrofoams. The Ecovative product is made from local, sustainable resources such as the agricultural byproducts of rice (China), buckwheat, and cottonseed (Texas) hull.
How it works is these waste products are placed within a dark room without electricity (no CO2 emissions) and a growing organism is introduced to it. Within the course of seven days the organism coats the byproduct creating a strong material suitable for insulation and packaging. It features a competitive r-value, comparable rigidity to polystyrene, and when the product is no longer needed it can be buried in the ground to be easily broken down.
Eben Bayer, the co-founder and CEO of Ecovative, received his dual B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Product Design and Innovation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in May of 2007. He was joined by fellow classmate, Gavin McIntyre (Co-founder, Chief Scientist). The team has since grown to include Edward Browka (Chief Operating Officer), Sam Harrington (Environmental Director), Sue Van Hook (Mycological Consultant), and Burt Swersey (Chief Advisor). We caught up with Eben to ask him more about the development of this great product and when we might start to see its benefits in the marketplace.
Tell us more about your product?
Eben: We are developing a whole new material. Instead of making it with conventional manufacturing processes, synthetic resins, we are actually growing materials. We are growing them indoors, in the dark in molds. It is actually a fungi. We take local feedstock, agricultural byproduct, and combine them together with a organism that we have identified.
We then form them into a shape and over a seven day period in the dark, without any electricity or petroleum, that organism self assembles a strong resin around these particles. We dry them out and get a rigid material that can be used as insulation, or depending on how you formulate it and what particles you use, a packaging material. It is totally compostable at the end of its lifestyle and it has an extremely low carbon footprint.
Is Greensulate as good as synthetic insulation?
Eben: Absolutely, we tested our structural properties and flammability. Our material is actually a firewall. If you put a torch to our material, our stuff will resist the flame and the Styrofoam goes up in a blast of toxic black smoke.
How can people use this product?
Eben: Initially this product is great for replacing Styrofoams that you place around heavy items, such as television or bathtubs. You only use these for a few days while it is being shipped and then it is thrown away. That is our Negative Volume product, essentially replacing Styrofoams with something that is good for your garden. We are also using the same core technology to produce Greensulate, which is a rigid board insulation for use in the building and construction industry.
What keeps it from biodegrading while in use?
Eben: It is a lot like building out of wood. You can soak our material and dry it out and it is not going to fault. But if you take our material and bury it in the earth it will over time break down as it is exposed to soil bacteria. There are differences in our Greensulate formulation to make it more robust for building applications than the packaging application (Negative Volume).
How does this compare to dissolving cornstarch packaging peanuts?
Eben: There are a couple of important distinctions. The peanuts are a food. Our product is used by inedible waste sources, such as seed husks that you can't really even feed to animals. Our product won't dissolve in water, and it is much stronger than those cornstarch foams, so you can use it when you are shipping heavy goods. It is really not a packaging peanut, but rather a replacement for those big ugly blocks of Styrofoam that go around heavy objects.
When can we expect to see this product?
Eben: It will be shipped to customers in limited quantities by the end of this year. We are currently looking for partners on this next jump.
What is the future for this technology?
Eben: Our vision is to essentially replace petroleum based synthetics, such as in plastics, foams, and resins.
How can our readers get involved in the release of this product?
Eben: One way for readers to get involved would be to buy a sample kit from our website that will include a desk sized Greensulate material sample, which has an interesting function or two. I will be a great way to be one of the first people in the world to see and touch this new material, a conversation starter, and a way to support a young startup business. We haven't finished putting them together yet, sorry, but they will be available mid-year.
How can our readers improve their carbon footprint in the meantime?
Eben: Readers can help improve there own carbon footprint by buying products that come in recyclable or compostable packaging material. There are not many options for heavy items right now, but when our product starts to ship we plan to tie-in on the exterior part of the box, so that consumers know they are not going to be getting a big pile of EPS that will go straight into a landfill.
Sounds great to us Eben, thanks for updating us on your progress with Greensulate and Negative Volume. We look forward to seeing a glimpse of these biodegradable packaging materials and rigid insulation boards by the last quarter of 2009!
Cool Videos of Greensulate on YouTube:
Green Challenge
Greensulate Fire Testing
More Green Inventors:
You're Never Too Young to be a Green Inventor
Get to Know the Lemelson Foundation
Bringing Hydraulic Hybrid Retrofits to Developing Nations (Colorado State University)
The Coconuts Project (Baylor University)
Get to Know: SMIT, Solar Power Ivy
Can the Watercycle Help Africa Survive? (Washington State University)
Deciphering Good Products from Bad is a Phone Text Away with GoodGuide (Berkeley University)
BEST Battery Program Aims to Reduce Lead Battery Poisoning in Asia
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