FAQ
Ecovative Design’s current focus as an R&D company is licensing our Mushroom® Packaging Technology in the U.S. and around the world, perfecting our scaffolding for alternative meat, and creating compostable materials for the fashion and beauty industries (not yet commercially available). If you’re a large business please visit our partnership page to learn of our tiered options.
Additionally, we welcome you to visit our GIY website to find more information and purchase Grow-It-Yourself mycelium kits. For any GIY specific questions, such as using our GIY materials for your classroom or placing bulk orders, please reach out to hello@openmyco.com
Please note that our MycoFlex material is not available as a GIY option and is not commercially available for partnerships, samples, or student projects at this time.
If you want to view our material specifications and packaging applications, you can visit our Mushroom Packaging site.
Please visit the following licensee sites to buy our materials:
Mushroom® Packaging (USA)- custom-designed packaging
West Coast (USA)- standard packaging shapes
Grow.bio (USA)- GIY material and supplies
Magical Mushroom Co. (UK/ EU)- custom-designed packaging
Grown.bio (EU)- custom-designed packaging
BioFab (OC)- custom-designed packaging
Products not commercially available:
Mushroom Insulation
Mycoboard
Tiny houses
Building materials
Panels
MycoFlex™
Forager™ Hides
At Ecovative we identify appropriate mushroom species for each of our technology applications from our vast mycelium library. In working with fungi’s natural attributes, something we call The Forager’s Secret, allows us to work with many species - drawing inspiration and perspective from these natural processes, which directly inspire our research into mycelial materials, engineering, and fabrication.
Ecovative is currently focused on three market verticals—food, textiles, and packaging. While mycelium can be used for many things, we only work on applications of mycelium that meet the following criteria:
(1) Solve an important global problem such as plastic pollution, industrial agriculture or, textile waste
(2) The problem can be best solved by mycelium, e.g. there is no other technology you would use to solve it
(3) There is a zeitgeist fit—a cultural movement around the problem to help accelerate the business
(4) Our technologies can achieve cost parity and matching performance to the product they are replacing when at commercial scale
Visit our Where To Find Us page to see our current partners.
Details on Mushroom® Packaging live on its website complete with an online ordering process to put you in touch with their team of designers. Please visit https://www.mushroompackaging.com for assistance.
Forager™ Hides are our 100% vegan and synthetic-free mycelium hide. We are partnering with leaders in the field and local tanneries to bring products to you. Please visit the Forager™ Hides page to learn more.
Mycelium is naturally hydrophobic, but it is not waterproof. If MycoComposite™ or MycoFlex™ are immersed in water they will lose their rigidity and become susceptible to degradation.
Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to take on any special projects, share research material, answer application-specific questions, or collaborate on new applications that are outside of our current scope of work & focus at this time. We appreciate your interest and enthusiasm for our work and ask that you take a look at some resources that are currently available to learn more about our business.
We recommend reading Eben’s web article for Scientific American or listening to his podcast interview for Business for Good. You can also listen to Gavin's podcast interview for Mushroom Revival, as it is very in-depth about Ecovative Design and the origins of our company and our technologies. Eben and Gavin are Ecovative's co-founders who are still instrumental members of our team.
We desiccate our Mushroom Packaging material, that means there is no living fungus when the packaging is sent to customers and returned to the earth at the end of its useful life. Did we mention it even has been proven to help enhance plant growth when added to soil!
We recommend checking out Ecovative’s YouTube Channel first! It is full of instructional videos and inspiration to successfully grow your GIY Kit.
If you still need more assistance please contact hello@openmyco.com if you purchased your GIY Kit from Grow.bio.
Our leather and foam alternative is 100% pure mycelium. Absolutely no plastics!
We are just as excited as you to launch Forager Hides and MycoFlex Foams into the world! Our teams are working diligently through 2022 to perfect these materials to reach commercial availability in 2023.
Thank you for your interest in earth-friendly beauty products. Currently, these products are in development for commercial use. Please check back on our Beauty page for partner listings in 2023.
We are proud to say there is just one! 100% mycelium from gourmet edible mushrooms already widely consumed. After harvesting, the mycelium tissue can be infused with flavors, fats, seasonings, marinades, and cooked; prepare as you would normally prepare meat. Visit MyForestFoods.com for more information.
We receive many inquiries about using our material to make surfboards. We tried to make it happen for two years, tweaking the technology and then passing the torch to see if a few other companies could make it happen. We just could not get to a viable for-market product.
You can read more about it here, or a simple google search of “Ecovative Surfboard” will pull up articles about our many attempts and past partners. Our current focus is on Mushroom Packaging and licensing the technology around the world to replace polystyrene, creating meat alternatives for MyEats and replacing plastics/disposables in the fashion and beauty industries.
Thank you very much for your interest in Ecovative Design and our technologies! We appreciate your enthusiasm and support for the work we are doing but we are not looking for private investors at this time.
We did just close a funding round in March 2021, you can read about it here.