Here's an idea that really grew on us at EcoPolitics.

Ecovative Design, started five years ago as an idea by two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students, just opened its new manufacturing facility, which turns mushrooms into environmentally sound packaging material.

Already employing 45 full-time and 15 part-time workers, the company now will be able to produce 10 times more of its "EcoCradle," product, which starts as a cake batter-like mix of agricultural wastes like corn stalks and mushroom fungus. The mix is poured into molds, where the fungus consumes the plant wastes to gradually take on a solid, spongy form. It is air dried and later baked, using green hydroelectric power.

Unlike traditional foams and plastics, this material contains no petrochemicals. It breaks down naturally, and is so safe that it can be chopped up and spread over gardens as a compost. "We are looking at it as a replacement for composite building materials, particle board ... cabinetry and furniture, and even a new shoe," said CEO Eban Bayer, who co-founded the company with RPI classmate Gavin McIntyre.

EcoCradle already has large corporate customers, including Dell and Puma.  Additionally, Ecovative Design recently signed a licensing agreement with Sealed Air, a Fortune 500 company. The Green Island plant is the first to be built under this agreement.

Part of what has helped Ecovative grow has been a blend of support from the government and private sector to nurture an innovation that sprang up from one of the Capital Region's premier academic institutions. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority invested more than $1 million into the company, which also received $250,000 from the state Empire State Development Environmental Investment Program.