Plan To Develop More Environmentally-Friendly Mushrooms

Ikea, a Swedish furniture chain, recently revealed that it plans to use environment-friendly packaging materials made from fungi as raw materials instead of the large ones now used. Plastic Packing.

　　 Xie Joanna Yarrow, Minister of sustainable development in the UK, said that the new packaging material is easier to degrade than traditional chemical plastic packaging.

This new material is mainly composed of mycelia (mycelium) with abundant fiber. This material was developed by Ecovative, an American company. By making the mycelium grow in agricultural wastes such as wheat straw and chaff after purification, the wheat straw and chaff were fixed into the shape of the mold. Finally, through drying treatment, the mycelium stopped growing and the packaging materials could be put into use.

It is reported that this is called " Mushroom packaging "(Mushroom Packaging) natural packaging materials can be completely degraded within weeks, and the damage to the natural environment is far less than that of plastics. As a product of petrochemical industry, plastic packaging takes hundreds of years to degrade naturally.

Because of the short service life and high turnover rate of household products, the corporate image of "quick throw" has been criticized by many environmentalists. Therefore, the positive performance of corporate social responsibility is more or less a response to such criticism.

The company has announced that it will increase investment in environment and sustainable development by 2020, including a clean investment in energy for all stores, totaling more than 755 million pounds (about 6 billion 890 million yuan). Meanwhile, the foundation promised to contribute 1 billion euros (7 billion 220 million yuan) to climate change in 2015.

Ecovative, founded in 2006 and headquartered in the US, is an innovative company that produces research and development of new biological materials based on fungi, including customers such as Dell. This enterprise has been invested by 3M and other enterprises in recent years. At present, it is also committed to popularizing fungus materials in automobile and construction industries.

The cooperation was confirmed in the field, but the material has not been put into production.