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22 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE SUMMER 2014

Package Deal
Written by Darren Gluckman | Photography courtesy of Ecovative
Move over, Styrofoam, see you later, Bubble Wrap.
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyres Ecovative is the new (environmentally-friendly) kid in town.
t may not be every childs dream to wind up
on the cover of Packaging World. Sports lllus-
trated, maybe. Rolling Stone. Wired, even. But in
July 2011, when the packaging industrys glam-
our publication featured Ecovatives patented
system for creating mushroom-based packag-
ing, it was a mark of professional recognition
for the young company and its equally youthful
founders, and more than just a shot across the
bow of Dow Chemical, the maker of the ubiqui-
tous polystyrene foam product known far and
wide by its trademarked moniker, Styrofoam.
Polystyrene foam exploded onto the com-
mercial scene in the mid-1950s. Like many
items now in common usewooden stack-
ing pallets, for instanceits success was, in
a sense, a by-product of the war efort. When
Southeast Asia fell to Japan, the U.S. lost access
to the Malaysian and Sri Lankan rubber tree
plantations that had supplied American indus-
try. Dow Chemical had produced vast stocks of
styrene in the course of a shuttered initiative
to create synthetic rubber. When the army
couldnt get its hands on the real stuf, Dow
stepped into the breach and quickly became
the dominant manufacturer of what would
become Styrofoam and its relatives. (Styrofoam
is, strictly speaking, blue and was primarily
used, at least initially, for insulation; its sister
products include polystyrene packing peanuts
and cofee cups.) During the war, one of its
uses was in fotation devices, like emergency
rafts, for ocean-going troops.
Tere are, according to its detractors, a few
issues with polystyrene foam. To begin with,
its manufactured from petroleum, a fossil fuel
that takes eons to generate, that is consumed
at an unsustainable rate, and whose extrac-
tion and transportation can pose signifcant
environmental risks (e.g., fracking hazards
and oil spills). In addition, it takes forever to
biodegrade; its not susceptible to photolysis,
the process by which molecular structures are
broken down by exposure to light. Its extreme
buoyancy has earned it the distinction of be-
ing the single most common form of marine
debris, to say nothing of its steadily increasing
ubiquity in land-based waste sites. And as it
makes its way into the food chain, it leaches
suspected carcinogens and neurotoxins into
the digestive tracts of both the animals who eat
it and the people who eat them.
AT AN AGE WHEN MOST NORTH
American teens dont associate mushrooms
with vegetables, Eben Bayer, tall as a small tree,
was scurrying the length and breadth of his
fathers sugar farm in rural Vermont, tapping
thousands of maple trees and running the sap
through a vast network of PVC tubes to a vat in
the sugarhouse, where the sap was boiled with
the aid of a wood-chip fueled burner. When,
as part of his duties, he shoveled scoopfuls of
wood chips into the furnace, he noticed that
mounds of chips were sometimes clumped
together, adhered to one another by myce-
lium growths that had sprouted in the dank,
darkened conditions of the tarp-covered pit.
Mycelium is the vegetative root system of
fungi, like mushrooms, and can be infnitesi-
I
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre.indd 22 14/5/26 4:13 PM
23 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE SUMMER 2014
COVER PROFILE
EBEN BAYER AND GAVIN MCINTYRE
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre.indd 23 14/5/26 4:13 PM
26 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE SUMMER 2014
mally small oras is the case of a patch of
growth in eastern Oregoncan cover as much
as 10 square kilometers.
Bayers experience with this ingenious
substance served him well when, in his senior
year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI,
Americas oldest technological research
university) in Troy, New York, he enrolled in a
class called Inventors Studio, helmed by a man
called Burt Swersey. Now in his late seventies,
Swersey had developed a long-standing reputa-
tion for impatience with lame ideas. Struggling
for an end-of-term concept that would satisfy
his irascible professor, Bayer fashed back to
his teenage labors and the binding properties
of mycelium. He ordered a mushroom-growing
kit, then threw the spores in a glass jar with
water and a handful of perlite pebbles. Within
a few days, hed cultivated a solid white disk,
the perlite bound stify together by a thick web
of mycelium. Swersey was, for once, impressed.
Bayer, now 28, had befriended a classmate,
Gavin McIntyre, whose parentsa mechanical
engineer and a radiation scientistworked
at Long Islands Brookhaven National Labora-
tory. When I frst met Gavin, says Bayer of his
collaborator, Ecovatives co-founder (and now
its chief scientist; Bayer is its CEO), I was im-
pressed with his work ethic, and also his frm
belief that anything is possibleso important
when starting a business. Swersey was aware
that the boys had talked of starting a company
together. He persuaded them to reenroll in his
course the following semester in order to develop this myce-
lium idea further. Upon graduation, McIntyre lined up a job at
Brookhaven and Bayer was recruited by the defense industrys
Applied Research Associates back in his home state of Vermont.
But Swersey the skeptic, once persuaded, was relentless. He
called them repeatedly over the summer, adamant that they
quit their careerist positions and focus on turning their project
into a going concern. He promised hed invest a portion of his
retirement savings to help get it of the ground. His tenacity
won them over and, with about three months worth of operat-
ing capital, they set up shop in borrowed space that Swersey
secured for them at RPI. (Swersey would become a key member
of the ventures advisory board, and Bayer says he continues
to serve as a sort of resident mentor. He usually stops in once
every other week or so and continues to push us as he did in our
early days.)
With Swerseys fnancial and institutional support, and the
prize money that began to trickle in from technological compe-
titions they entered, their companythen called Greensulate,
on account of an early, insulation panel iterationachieved
liftof. Tey experimented furiously, and the movie-montage
version of this phase would likely include the moment a small
but unanticipated explosion removed McIntyres eyebrows
(since regrown). Tey brought in a mycologistthe fancy way
of saying mushroom expertwho helped them in the search
for the perfect polypore (a type of fungi with particularly robust
mycelium), the name of which is now a carefully guarded trade
secret. In 2008, a mere year after graduating from RPI, the com-
pany garnered attention after winning the 500,000 top prize in
Hollands PICNIC Green Challenge, and in 2009, Ecovative deci-
sively shifted its focus from insulation; going forward, it would
deliver mushroom-based packaging alternatives to that dreaded
plastic foam. TED Talks and other prestigious opportunities
COVER PROFILE
EBEN BAYER AND GAVIN MCINTYRE
P
H
O
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O

B
Y

S
T
E
P
H
E
N

N
O
C
K
The Ecovative team
outside their facility in
Green Island, NY.
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre.indd 26 14/5/26 4:13 PM
28 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE SUMMER 2014
to present its vision soon followed, and were
themselves quickly followed by expressions of
interest from investors, including the global
manufacturing conglomerate 3M. Brand-name
clients have signed on. Dell Computers, Puma,
Crate & Barrel. Sealed Air, the multibillion-
dollar packaging and materials company,
producer of, among other things, Bubble Wrap,
has licensed Ecovatives mushroom-packaging
technology and has adapted an Iowa factory to
start churning the stuf out.
Ecovatives own physical plant has expand-
ed, from the cramped, frst-foor studio at RPI
to an eight-thousand-square-foot space in the
(almost too aptly named) Green Island, New
York, to the thirty-two thousand square feet of
its current premises across the road. Its there
that agricultural waste like cornstalks and
husks are pasteurized, injected with nutrients
and water, and infused with mycelium pellets.
Te mixture is poured into customized molds,
where, with virtually no external energy re-
quired, the mycelium gets to work binding the
crop waste (in the U.S., largely corn by-prod-
ucts, but in places like China, for instance, rice
hulls can supply the necessary substrate). Four
days later, after fash heating stops the growth
process, the result is an industrial strength,
100 percent biodegradable packaging product.
McIntyre rejects the term bioengineering to
describe what Ecovative does, preferring bio-
adaption. Were not engineering an organism
to work in an industrial setting, he says, but
rather leveraging the innate abilities that na-
ture presents into the manufacturing process.
BAYER AND MCINTYRE ARE AVOWED-
ly interested in advancing our collective
environmental health, but theyre hardly indif-
ferent to the success of their business venture.
Bayer has said he wants Ecovative to be the
Dow or DuPont of this century. In an e-mail
exchange, he acknowledges that, in terms of
defending our turf, we do all the normal things
companies do around intellectual property
and trade secrets; just as important, we continue to innovate
and constantly strive to outdo ourselves. And McIntyre says he
continues to be impressed by Bayers leadership of their corpo-
rate baby. Tat said, both of them express enthusiasm for their
competitors.
Were very grateful for competition, Bayer says, since by
defnition, our competition is other responsible alternatives
to synthetic plastics, which advances our core goal of improv-
ing the planet. Tey cite as examples bioMASON (a company
that grows bricks from sand) and Dutch State Mines, which
McIntyre notes is orienting itself in a bio-based direction.
Tis commitment to the cause is refected in some extracur-
ricular pursuits. When Im not working at Ecovative, Bayer
reveals, I spend most of my time outside. Im currently restor-
ing a 100-year-old mountaintop farm in Troy. Ive also been
working on of-grid energy systems, building a small hydroelec-
tric system for future farm buildings, which is a real mixture of
old technology and new, including a custom-built remote access
that lets me text the hydro site when I need more power. You
know, just your typical, garden-variety weekend-type stuf.
ECOVATIVE MAY BE A YOUNG, CUTTING-EDGE
tech company, a disrupter in the best sense of that overused
word, but that doesnt mean its sprawling headquarters feature
Ping-Pong tables, foosball, or employee hot tubs.
I know its not very hip, says Bayer, but weve never had a
very Silicon Valley we-work-on-nonsense ofce culture. Were
serious about what were doing and we recognize that changing
the material and energy fows of our planet is no easy task. So:
no raw juice bar, no free massages, and no food court. Its not all
work, no play, though. We make time for our team with month-
ly events, including of-site hikes deep in the woods, complete
with late-night saunas punctuated by jumping into ice ponds
under the stars. And, he concedes, we do have a basketball
hoop on our manufacturing foor. Tis sentiment is an echo of a
comment he made about Internet start-ups in a very thorough
New Yorker profle last year. Internet start-ups are great, he
snifed, but theyre not, you know, making anything.
Ecovative isnt just making things; its making a diference.
COVER PROFILE
EBEN BAYER AND GAVIN MCINTYRE
The Mushroom

Wine
Shipper keeps wine cool
during transport.
Ecovatives
materials achieve
a Class A fire
resistance rating
(ASTM E84).
Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre.indd 28 14/5/26 4:13 PM

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