REI is dedicated to conserving nature particularly in how they package their merchandise in their distribution warehouses. During my brief internship at one of REI's warehouses, I was thought how to use as little packaging space as possible, so the customer would not have to pay extra for shipping costs. But this practice also helps them save on cardboard boxes and packaging material which will help achieve the company's goal of becoming a zero waste-to-landfill organization by 2020. When I was researching for this paragraph, I discovered this company called Ecovative Design which uses dried up fungi as a Styrofoam substitute. Styrofoam being a petroleum based product is not biodegradable at all while EcoCradle which uses the ingredient in the mushroom root called mycelium to use as bonding agent and will be binding as well as being biodegradable. The foam is as strong as most materials, but its main strong suit is how well it ages. When put under simulated aging tests, EcoCradle does not degrade with age and gets stiff when subjected to heat while most plastic based foams do not. Plus, Ecovative Design founder and chief scientist Gavin McIntyre says that the material will be no more expensive then Styrofoam. If all goes well, McIntyre says that Ecovative Design’s foam will be in automobiles within the next 12 to 18 months.
