Harvard University experts working on the concept have filled an orange membrane with orange juice, a tomato-flavoured enclosure with gazpacho (cold Spanish/Portuguese tomato-based raw vegetable soup) and grape packages with wine.
Biomedical engineer David Edwards said that he hopes to create a prototype of the bottle out of ‘WikiCells’ soon.
“In the near-term, we will be encountering WikiCells in restaurant settings as a novelty item,” he said.
WikiCells is an edible material created from a biodegradable polymer or plastic and food particles. Essentially, it’s an egg-like membrane hard shell. It can be filled with a variety of flavours, including orange juice, wine or chocolate.
It could form either a layer that you could peel off a bottle, or, one day, make the entire container. The product, a membrane created using a biodegradable plastic combined with food particles, could either be peeled off or potentially eaten whole.
“People in a village in Africa could become plastic bottle-free. It’s really exciting from a humanitarian point of view,” said Edwards, who hopes to produce a WikiCell machine that could allow people, especially in the developing world, to make their own bottles without relying on plastic.?
Orange juice and tomato soup is one thing, but I wonder if WikiCells can be made to taste like water?
Source: Harvard University/Daily Mail
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