The Missing Piece in Cellulose Foam: Process Engineering, Not More Chemistry

Abstract

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) and polyethylene (PE) foams remain the dominant cushioning materials in protective packaging because of their low density, resilience, and impact-attenuation performance, but their environmental persistence and poor post-consumer recovery are driving increasingly strict packaging regulations. Cellulose-based alternatives — molded pulp, foam-formed and nanofibrillated cellulose (CNF) foams, and mycelium-bound composites — have each achieved partial success, yet none has simultaneously matched EPS/PE-level cushioning performance, cost, and manufacturing scale. This editorial argues that closing this gap depends less on specialty furnish chemistry — surfactants, cross-linkers, or biological cultivation steps — than on process-engineering advances that convert ordinary pulp furnish, using confined-mold vapor expansion and conventional natural binders, into a porous, EPS-like cellular structure, and calls for coordinated industrial investment in that direction.