World’s first ice cream made from plastic
Reuters | 28 September 2023
The world’s first food made from plastic waste - according to its developer - is vanilla ice cream.
Despite being locked in a freezer in London, she hopes it kickstarts a heated debate about the future of food and the plastic pollution crisis.
The ice cream is actually an art installation called ‘Guilty Flavours’ by artist and designer Eleanora Ortolani, 27, intended to challenge the way we think about plastic waste and what we are - and are not - prepared to eat.
"Guilty Flavours is what I believe is the first sample of ice cream made from plastic waste,” Ortolani told Reuters at Central Saint Martins, part of the University of the Arts London.
“It's coming from the same plastic as we can find in bottles, plastic bottles,” she said.
The process, developed by scientists in Edinburgh, harnesses the metabolic power of bacteria and enzymes to behave as eco-friendly factories to digest polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and turn it into vanillin, the molecule that gives vanilla its flavour.
“There are certain enzymes which do certain chemical reaction,” Dr Joanna Sadler, a biotechnologist at the University of Edinburgh, told Reuters.
“So if you plug those together, you can get through to lots of different chemical products," she said.
Plastic is made of a string of molecules bonded together into what are known as polymers.
Sadler broke those bonds with a hungry microbe, leaving her with molecules that were no longer plastic.
That former PET-soup was then easily processed by another bacteria into vanillin.
Sadler's research, published in the Journal Biochemist in December 2021, focuses on degrading and upcycling plastic and using it as feedstock for microbial growth.
She produced the specially engineered bugs for Ortolani's project but was at pains to point out that the student's ice cream is very much a research project.
It's not currently for human consumption.
"I've even had members of the public email me saying it's irresponsible to encourage people to eat plastic," Sadler said.
"It is really important that we take the safety side of it really, really seriously and we make it very clear that this has to go through exactly the same regulatory processes and food standard processes as any other food ingredient.
And only once it has been through all of those would it go anywhere near any kind of consumer product."
Ortolani, who is from Verona, Italy, said Guilty Flavours was inspired by her frustration with the failure of the recycling system to stop plastic polluting the environment.
It is locked away to highlight what she says is a looming global food crisis.
“We have the tools today to rethink the food system we're living in,” she said.
“This is ready now and today but nobody can really touch it or interact with it because it's not tested for safety yet."
Vanilla, sometimes called 'green gold', is the second most expensive spice in the world after saffron.
UK designer recycles plastic into vanilla ice cream
27 September 2023
Introducing the world's first food made from plastic waste... vanilla ice cream!
Named Guilty Flavours, the ice cream has been designed to provoke viewers into thinking about plastic waste.
The ice cream was developed by scientists in Edinburgh, who used bacteria and enzymes to digest PET plastic and turn it into vanillin -- the molecule that gives vanilla its flavour.
The ice cream is still in its research phase and currently not for human consumption.