An organic alternative to styrofoam packaging. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm

Megan McCarty Carrino.

Polystyrene is the chemical compound that makes up styrofoam used for packaging and insulation.

But it's not the most environmentally friendly.

By one estimate, 40 million tons of polystyrene were produced globally in 2024,

leaving millions of tons of plastic waste. The search for an

earth-friendly alternative has led researchers to dig deep and come up with an unlikely solution.

Fungus. The BBC's Anna Holligan has this story. We're taking you on a little mushroom-picking expedition.

In the woods, just outside a university lab

that's turning dead trees and fungus into insulation

that could one day blow plastic foam,

also known as polystyrene, right off the shelves.

Mushrooms have been used for hundreds and thousands of years in Arctic. foam, also known as polystyrene, right off the shelves.

Mushrooms have been used for hundreds and thousands of years in the Arctic.

That's Professor Philippe Amtyslavsky from the University of Alaska.

Here is one. It has a very fancy Latin name, Fomis Fomontarios.

It is very common across the Arctic world and subarctic.

If you knock on it, the sound is very similar to what we got from styrofoam.

So how on earth do you turn mushrooms or mycelium,

the root-like structure of a fungus, into insulation?

Alexandra Ravello is on a mission to stop plastics choking our oceans. What we do in the lab is mix wood fiber like pulp and cardboard and you use a foaming apparatus.

Then that foam can get inoculated with mushroom and then you'll put it in an incubator in pan, and then you'll let it grow in that incubator for about five days,

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