Organic insulation

Eben Bayer, a graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has developed an environmentally friendly organic insulation - with the help of some mushrooms!

His patented combination of water, flour, minerals, and mushroom spores could replace conventional foam insulations, which are expensive to produce and harmful to the environment.

Households use nearly one-fifth the total energy consumed in the US every year - and of that energy, 50 to 70 percent is spent on heating and cooling, according to the US Department of Energy.

To reduce this massive energy expenditure, new and existing homes must be fitted with more insulation. Conventional polystyrene and polyurethane foam blends are typically used because of their excellent capacity to insulate, but they require petroleum for production and are not biodegradable.

The son of a successful farmer in South Royalton, Vermont, Bayer’s knowledge of the Earth and fungal growth led him to develop a novel method of bonding insulating minerals using the mycelium growth stage of pleurotus ostreatus mushroom cells.