Imagine if after eating your ice cream, you could eat the package that it came in. Might sound like fantasy, but thanks to Harvard Professor David Edwards, this idea has now become reality. It’s a bold and innovative move towards eliminating plastic and paper in packaging using the principles of biomimicry, a practice that looks to models, systems and elements in nature to create solutions to human problems.
Edwards is calling the invention WikiCell. He developed the idea along with designer François Azambourg under the umbrella of a creative collaboration that Edwards founded called ArtScience Labs which has a base in Paris and one in Boston.
Wondering how it works? As explained on the WikiCell website:
“Each WikiCell has a nutritional skin held together by healthy ions like calcium. Think about the skin of a grape and how it protects the grape itself. This is how a WikiCell works. This soft skin may be comprised primarily of small particles of chocolate, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, or many other natural substances with delicious taste and often useful nutrients.”
Their first commercial product is the Wiki Ice Cream. It looks like a colored snowball with a bagasse container that is made from sugar cane encasing the ice cream inside. The whole thing is edible, no plastic, no trash. The Wiki Ice Cream will hit the market in Paris this summer with a debut in Boston this fall. The packaging doesn’t melt and can be washed off to appease germaphobes.
Coming in the near future, WikiCells may enclose yogurt, cheese, juice or any number of other foods. Thinking out of the box has helped David Edwards and his team think us out of the package.
