BRB w/ Nathan P – Myco-Foam, Sriracha Tofu Stir-Fry & The Navalmanack

How mushrooms can replace styrofoam, a delicious stir-fry from 4 TJ ingredients, wisdom from a Silicon Valley veteran – plus, a few writing tips (#33).

Hi all,

Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P, your 5-min weekly dose of climate information to inspire climate action.

My mission is to make it fun, easy, and delicious to make more sustainable decisions.

Each Wednesday, I share 💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate.

I have also written daily on LinkedIn for the past two weeks on how mushrooms can save the planet 🍄 , sharing some learnings at the end of this newsletter.

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💥 Breakthrough: Myco-Foam

There’s a toxic plastic polluting our waterways – and mushrooms could be the key to replacing it.

Styrofoam is the second most abundant beach debris in California, and makes up 10-40% of plastic pollution in the world’s rivers.

Source: NYT

Styrofoam is a common name for expanded polystyrene foam. It is made when we link – or “polymerize” – units of styrene molecules into a chain, then extrude them under heat and pressure to get a foam.

Many of us interact with it on a daily basis – with styrofoam coffee cups, styrofoam packing peanuts, and styrofoam molds in electronic packages.

Styrofoam takes centuries to decompose. And as the chains break down, they leach styrene – a known animal carcinogen and potential human neurotoxin – into the environment.

Styrofoam is a toxic ticking time bomb. We currently use 14 million tons of it every year and it makes up 25-35% of landfills. Its consequences will linger for a long time.

Thankfully, mushrooms can offer a more benign replacement.

IKEA is replacing its styrofoam in packaging with a foam made from fungi.

US-based Ecovative supplies IKEA with MycoComposite, a durable and shock resistant myco-foam.

Image source: Ecovative Mycocomposite

Myco-foam is a plastic-free alternative that is non-toxic, can fully biodegrade, and even upcycles fibers from agricultural waste streams.

Here’s how it’s made:

🌾 Ag byproducts from oats, hemp, or cotton are ground and pressed into shape

🍄 The molded shape is inoculated with mushroom spores

🕸️ Mycelium rapidly grows to consume the ag leftovers and fill the shape

🔥 The mycelium composite is heat-treated to stop growth and increase durability

MycoComposite takes 7 days to make and 30 days to decompose when wet or composted.

This technology is currently aiming to solve the most problematic use of styrofoam in packaging.

But it could take on a wide range of shapes and functions. Myco-foam could be used to make items like insulation, furniture, or even potentially entire houses.

We may not be able to get rid of plastics just yet. As the weight of plastics is expected to surpass fish in the oceans by 2050, it’s clear we can’t continue on this path of linear overproduction and overconsumption.

So to the best you can, avoid using styrofoam. You can bring reusable mugs to coffee shops, and even change your packaging preferences on Amazon to reduce plastic.

The future of this planet relies on circular and mindful consumption. And the future of materials isn’t with fossil fuels – it’s with fungi and biology.

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🥘 Recipe: Sriracha Tofu Stir Fry

I love Trader Joe’s and their products.

But I didn’t expect only 4 ingredients to make a veggie stir fry this good. And that it only takes 15- minutes to make 3 meals-worth of food? A weeknight dream.

I don’t know if I can really call this a “recipe”… though I can promise it’s worth the shout-out.

To spare you the usual detailed recipe, here’s the line-up:

• Trader Joe’s Squiggly Knife Cut Noodles

• Trader Joe’s Organic Sprouted Tofu

• Trader Joe’s Frozen Veggie Stir Fry with Spiral Zucchini

• Trader Joe’s Sriracha

Just dice and sauté the tofu in neutral oil, add in the frozen veggies, cook the pasta to package instructions, mix altogether (with the sesame + soy sauce packets from the pasta), and add sriracha to your desired spiciness. And voilà. You are welcome.

If you make it, please send pictures :)

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📚 Book: The Navalmanack

It might not be an exaggeration to consider this book the Bible of life-optimizers and die-hard Twitter (X?) fans.

Naval Ravikant is regarded by many as one of the wisest people in Silicon Valley.

He was actually embarrassed into starting his first company. He would tell everyone at work that he was just here temporarily, and that he would soon leave to launch his start-up.

And after people kept asking as to why he was still there, he left and founded Angel List. He then invested early in Twitter and the other usual suspects of the tech unicorn roster.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – often called the Navalmanack by fans – is a summary of his famous Tweetstorms, podcast appearances, and philosophical musings.

After listening to many of his interviews on the Tim Ferriss show, there were some great reminders and fresh insights in this book.

This book is a summary of Naval’s thinking and maxims on wealth and happiness. It was written as a public service, so the e-book is available for free here.

I believe much of the thinking here to be useful on two key levels:

1. On the changing our mindsets as we transition from an industrial to a knowledge-based & creator economy.

2. On instilling new values and a revolutionary culture in the organizations of this knowledge-based economy – including the crucial climate & bioeconomy start-ups.

Some favorite quotes:

• Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.

• A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.

• Escape competition through authenticity.

• Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.

• A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control.

• If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.

• Earn with your mind, not your time.

• The older the problem, the older the solution.

• This is such a short and precious life that it’s really important that you don’t spend it being unhappy.

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And as promised, a few writing tips

Writing on the internet is hard.

So I decided to start a 30-day experiment of posting daily to see what works and what doesn’t on LinkedIn.

My posts have gathered 145,000+ impressions and 1,500+ engagements so far, and I’m grateful for all the wonderful people I’ve been fortunate to meet and engage with. Hello if you’re one of them! 👋

I’m halfway through the challenge, and below are 5 things I’ve learned. I’ll be referencing one post that did particularly well as an example.

1. Write a great hook

You need a great hook for people to read on. There’s many great hook formats:

• a bold statement or contrarian opinion

• the beginning of a story

• an interesting question

• a statistic

• a quote

Most of the ones I’ve used are bold statements / declarations, or the beginning of a story. You want to pique interest and withhold some information to encourage reading on.

The hook is even stronger when it is related to a topic that is timely and top of mind.

Here was the one I used:

How I imagined the reader would react:

• something secret about the DOD? oh what?

• wait it’s not wildfires?

• what could be so special about a mushroom for the DOD to pay attention?

2. Structure strategically

There’s no one formula to great digital writing. It can be helpful to take the reader through a *very* short story that is crafted intentionally.

Ideally, it describes a problem, paints a positive future, and provides a solution (optionally, with a call to action).

My post went something like this:

• Hook & build intrigue

• Inform & inspire (e.g. with cool mushroom facts 🍄)

• Paint a positive future

• Problem

• Solution & call to action

3. Learn platform-specific constraints

Social media platforms want to keep users online as long as possible. So they’ll often avoid promoting things that might drive traffic away from the platform.

LinkedIn, for instance, doesn’t love links, so it tends not to promote posts with them as much. I would avoid links in posts at first – images or videos (with credits) do better as visuals.

Some believe that posts can be edited 30 minutes after posting to include a link and not be affected by the algorithm, which could be another option. Of course, that won’t work if the main visual is a link to an article or other website.

4. What times to post

Timing doesn’t seem to be the most important element in how well posts do on LinkedIn.

However, early engagement – reactions and comments – can drive the visibility of a post.

I’ve seen this happen most organically either between 8 and 9am ET (during commute on the East Coast) or 11am and 12pm ET (morning commute for West Coast, evening commute for Europe, and lunch for East Coast).

5. Just get started

There’s no perfect time to start writing.

If you want to, first find something you want to write about. Start with a specific niche you find interesting. It could be “how doing X in your 20s can allow you do to Y in your 30s,” or in my case, how mushrooms can save the planet 🍄

If you are thinking about starting, please feel free to consider me as a resource. My inbox is open and I’d love to hear from you.

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Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️

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About Me

Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.

Want to get in touch or chat further? Anything you’d like to hear more of?

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