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As if it were an ice cream made for Barbie’s plastic world, an artist wanted to explore sustainable innovation in gastronomy by joining a collective of scientists to ‘hack’ the food system.
It is a vanilla ice cream made with the same materials found in plastic bottles. A sweet iteration that several Scottish scientists at the University of Edinburgh carried out using bacteria and special enzymes to break down a chemical compound in the plastic and turn it into vanilla.
According to Reuters, London-based artist Eleanora Ortolani would develop it as part of an art installation intended to challenge the way we think about plastic waste, about what we are and are not willing to eat. The project, which was part of her final year work for Central Saint Martins, was exhibited in this installation called ‘Guilty Flavors‘.
Ortolani would then work hand in hand with that cast of scientists to take a small amount of plastic, break it down in a laboratory and convert it into vanillin, the aromatic molecule in vanilla. He would then transform the vanillin into the food he most associated with that flavor. In other words, an ice cream that, although not yet available for human consumption, could soon revolutionize the food industry.
