Mycelium Biocomposites from Agricultural and Paper waste: Sustainable alternative to plastic foam based secondary packaging

Plastic foams, which were once lauded as a breakthrough invention in packaging and insulation industries, have gradually evolved into a global problem and are more concerning in developing nations because of ineffective waste management systems. The convenience and pervasiveness of these come at a high cost with adverse effects on human health and our planet’s ecosystems as they are not biodegradable. It is pivotal that an alternative and sustainable solution is found to address this problem. Mycelium-based biocomposites, made up of root-like networks called hyphae are sought out as a potential substitute for plastic-based foams as they are biodegradable. They employ a waste-to-value strategy by using agricultural wastes as a growing media for the mycelium. The study primarily focuses on the comparative analysis of mycelium-based biocomposites with existing foam materials such as Expanded PolyStyrene (EPS) and evaluates their efficacy as a biodegradable packaging material. Thus, we plan to identify the efficacious strain of mycelium from Pleurotus ostreatus or Ganoderma lucidum and also explore various substrate materials such as cocopith, cardboard, paper, and sawdust. Our preliminary compression results show that the biocomposites can be engineered to have Young’s modulus ranging from 1-3 MPa for both strains. These results show that mycelium-based biocomposites can be a promising alternative to EPS /Styrofoam and move towards a sustainable solution that can reduce the dependence on non-biodegradable foam-based materials in developing nations like India.