Ecovative Design Partners with Ford to Develop Mushroom-Based Car Parts

Mushrooms. They're great for pasta sauce, vision quests, and... car parts? Maybe. Ecovative Design, a Green Island, New York-based start-up, just announced a deal with Ford to develop a fungus-based, biodegradable material to be used for car bumpers, doors, and dashboards.

Ecovative Design has been developing mushroom-based materials since its founding in 2007. It uses the fungus root structures called mycelium to bind agricultural by-products such as corn and oat husks together. The result is a solid, foam-like material that the company has already marketed for packaging (the furniture company Steelcase is Ecovative's biggest client) and home insulation.

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If Ecovative can grow their material to be uniform enough to satisfy safety requirements of the car industry, it could replace petroleum-based plastics that are currently used in cars. And if you get in a fender-bender with this stuff, you can just bury the old bumper. The mushroom foam decomposes in one month in soil.