From the moment
you get dressed in the morning,
get in your car.
Can I get a cold brew?
And pick
up your morning latte,
or maybe your morning Big Gulp,
you are surrounded by plastic.
Hello?
You can't even eat
breakfast without plastic.
And all this packaging
is a big source of waste.
It's more likely to pile up
in our landfills than
it is to get recycled.
I'm Katie Herzog.
Good mouth feel.
Oaky finish.
Today, we're visiting a scientist
who's taking on the
future of plastic waste.
So you think you have a plan
to reduce food packaging waste.
I do.
And what is your idea?
One of the ways using edible packaging.
Edible packaging.
Edible packaging,
basically it's made using
all the material edible,
like food ingredients.
All right, science.
Yeah, science.
Magic.
[upbeat music]
All right, so what do we have here?
Fruit roll, or sometimes
called fruit leather.
You can see, after you open them,
you have those plastic wraps, right?
So this is plastic.
It's plastic, and you have to throw away.
That's a waste, right?
Good.
So what you can do is, you can
roll your fruits here, right?
It's preventing sticky,
then you can just eating them together.
Just give a try.
All right, so just the--
Yeah.
All right.
You can bite them.
Mmm, not bad.
Yeah, thank you.
Not bad at all.
Zhao says it probably
won't replace all plastic food packaging,
but it could replace a lot
of the packaging within packaging.
String cheese, instant
coffee, instant oatmeal.
The seasoning in your ramen noodle.
Those bags that keep your cereal fresh.
Plastic bags on fruits and veggies.
The plastic that protects
your chicken breast.
All of that packaging could
be consumed with your food.
Yeah, so how far could we take this?
What's the future of
edible food packaging?
Yes, then let's look
at the other options as a fruit coating.
Strawberries, bananas, pears,
and then she watched to see
if a recipe would make
the food last longer.
We did try in the lab,
they worked very, very well
for extending shelf life.
So these are the same age?
Same age.
All right, this one looks fresher.
Let's try it.
Pretty good.
Yeah.
I'd eat that.
I did eat that.
So how realistic is this?
Are we actually going
to be eating our food packaging someday?
Maybe.
Researchers around the world are looking
for the perfect recipe
to make plastic food packaging disappear.
Some are using milk protein
to make an alternative to plastic wrap.
Others have used gelatin
to make edible blobs
that could replace our water bottles.
KFC recently tried serving its coffee
in a cup made out of a cookie,
which means even if we're not
eating big packaging like this,
we could be throwing away less plastic
and eating our way to a cleaner planet.
