Pretty much every food item you bring home from the store has some kind of wrapper. Those that don&rsquot, like fruits and vegetables, you put into one. Beyond the simple hassle of dealing with food packaging, this creates massive amounts of waste, which takes its toll on the environment. A startup in cambridge called wikicell hopes to change all this, and they&rsquore off to a promising start with the announcement today that they&rsquove raised 10 million from flagship ventures and polaris ventures.
The company&rsquos release describes itself as &ldquodeveloping deliciously edible forms of food and beverage packaging,&rdquo and its founders are david edwards, a professor at harvard, and robert connelly, previously of the biotech firm pulmatrix. &ldquowikicell designs offers the consumer a path to reducing their plastic and paper footprint while enjoying a truly delicious and unique eating experience.
By replacing plastic and other forms of packaging with delicious natural edible packaging, wikicell can have a profound impact on the world,&rdquo said wikicell designs ceo and cofounder robert connelly in the release. &ldquothis technology is applicable to a vast amount of food and beverages and we intend to market products direct to consumer and in retail settings, with our own branded products and with partner brands.&rdquo i&rsquod be lying if i said i understood how wikicell plans to achieve this, but here&rsquos how it&rsquos described on the company&rsquos 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. Inside the skin may be liquid fruit juice, or thick pudding. From a purely environmental perspective it&rsquos certainly encouraging to see the economics are a different question. Sure, the food industry does pay for the packaging involved on the front end, but it doesn&rsquot bear the cost of disposal.
So wikicell will have to either deliver an alternative that is cheap enough to compete with traditional packaging, or play to the preferences of ecofriendly consumers. Edwards has been behind a number of novel products that we&rsquove covered, including the inhaleable caffeine aeroshot, and similar sprays for chocolate and alcohol.
