This looks like those rough cardboard inserts. Is it actually any better? Especially since they can use the lowest grade of recycled cardboard.

Between Mycellium and intelligent networks communicating nodes and 'learning' (and solving mazes' and brain's microtubules with fractal frequencies, biology looks like advanced computing literally very ahead for its time compared to what we the humans were trying to achieve barey half a century ago.

It sounds good but will this ever scale enough? Plastics are just so freaking cheap that anything that wants become a serious alternative (aside from being a marketing gimmick) needs to be very cheap. I honestly have my doubts but I'm excited that people are looking for alternatives

This seems like a nice stepping stone towards something cool, but having the forming happen at a dedicated facility seems to miss the point. The promise of this technology is that instead of:

- make packaging

-> ship to where product is packed

-> ship to consumer

-> ship to recycler

you can:

- grow packaging where product is packed

-> ship to consumer

- consumer composts it in their garden

That is, the packaging should just make one trip instead of three. Hopefully they eventually figure out how to make kits so that shippers can just grow the packaging around the actual product. The hard part will be ensuring that the biomass used as feedstock (likely a waste product from some process nearby to where the product is packed) is actually something that people want in their garden. Doable, but maybe not the kind of thing markets can be trusted to do on their own.

Going on a little PR adventure today are we?

By which time should we expect US administration to post a video on X about “good classic” plastic bags and ban in the US any attempt to replace them? :)

I love this. I'm assuming the company is looking for government subsidy to replace plastic in frequently disposed plastic packaging (like takeout containers or styrofoam packing)

Are these packagings edible?

Now if they can get a mushroom that eats plastic to use it as fuel to grow the mycelium that would be even better.