GUILTY FLAVOURS: The paradox of vanilla ice cream made from plastic

Eleonora Ortolani is an artist and designer who creates works of vanilla ice cream using plastic as a raw material. She is currently based in London. After graduating from the Politecnico di Milano with a degree in design, she worked as a visual designer for VF Corporation, a company that handles major brands in Switzerland, and later worked on visual production for campaigns, etc., as the global headquarters for the Italian fashion brand Napapijri. However, she felt uncomfortable with marketing methods aimed at making money, so she quit and moved to the UK. She enrolled in the Material Futures course at Central St. Martins (CSM), a university of arts in London, and enjoyed learning how to create a sustainable future through design. She studied not only all aspects of design theory, including objectives, procedures and mechanisms, but also culture and political ethics. Constantly clarifying the purpose of design and designing solutions through analysis had a great impact on her.

"Maybe it's because the problem is too big, but I think they're trying to shift the blame to someone else."

This situation, where we are creating new problems instead of solving them, is not just about our classmates. If you open the lid, you will find that it applies to large companies and various industries as a whole.
　
“I think that environmental issues are a huge problem for us humans, but they are being ignored. The problem is right there in front of us, but everyone is pretending not to see it, as if they are trying to push it away. Even though policies have been thought up, we still haven’t even come close to solving the problem. The same is true for the plastic problem. Maybe it’s because the problem is too big, but I think people are trying to pass the blame on to someone else.”
　
Tired of people and companies who go to the trouble of making things that can’t be recycled by mixing them with 100% biodegradable or recyclable materials, Eleonora decides to take a year off from school. The Guilty Flavours project began by deliberately confronting the existence of plastic, which is so unpleasant.

Plastic is used in many aspects of our lives. It is almost impossible to create an alternative to plastic, but then we came across the existence of wax worms, insects that have the potential to solve the problem organically. These larvae have an enzyme that digests certain plastics, such as polyester, which is used in packaging. We also learned that a different type of bacteria is being researched to recycle PET bottles. Idionella saccayensis is a bacterium discovered in Japan that uses polyethylene terephthalate, the raw material for PET bottles, as a source of nutrition. It has evolved to digest plastic in order to adapt to an environment full of plastic.
　
During her research, Elenora met Joanna Sadler, a scientist at the University of Edinburgh who was also conducting similar research. She, too, was interested in turning plastic into food, and had already succeeded in extracting the aroma of vanilla from plastic. By mixing the Ideonella sakaiensis enzyme with E. coli, which is also found in the human body, and rewriting the DNA, it is possible to destroy the plastic and at the same time produce vanillin, the vanilla aroma. After successfully producing the genetically modified bacteria, Joanna gave Eleonora some of her bacteria, and Eleonora herself tried the experiment.
　
“Even though I followed the instructions and carried out the experiment, I failed many times due to the complexity of the experiment. In the instructions, it sounds very simple, but in reality, it was important to keep feeding the bacteria at the right temperature and to grow them. After carrying out the experiment in the correct order and measuring everything down to the micrometer, I was finally able to put the plastic bottle in. The active bacteria ate it, and I was able to smell the aroma of vanilla for the first time.”

Guilty Flavours is an artwork in which ice cream sealed in a freezer sits in a sealed container. Nobody can eat the ice cream inside.
　
“At the beginning of the experiment, I thought of the act of eating it as part of the performance, but I was forbidden to eat it. It was a great disappointment, but it also led me to discover something new.”
　
When you hear the word ‘vanilla ice cream’, you might easily imagine that it uses vanilla beans from vanilla trees. However, did you know that the main ingredient in many of the vanilla essences sold in supermarkets is crude oil? Just as dairy products use vegetable oil instead of milk, there are many foods that we eat without questioning their ingredients, and that are not actually made from animals or plants. If the molecular formula of vanillin made from crude oil is the same as that of vanillin made from waste plastic, is there really any difference? Also, even though many people believe they are eating “safe” food without knowing what they are actually putting in their mouths, there were many people who raised their voices in protest against “ice cream with a vanilla flavor made from waste plastic”.

Eleonora Ortrani often works on projects related to food because it is something that everyone can easily relate to. Whether it’s ice cream, it’s something that people of all ages and both sexes can understand, and it can be developed politically or linked to larger issues. Food is something that is very familiar to us and has a great influence on us.

While the human body has barely evolved in the last 2000 years, our eating habits have changed dramatically.
In this day and age, we can easily buy food at stores. But in our rush for convenience, have we become careless about what we are actually putting into our mouths? Eleanor is currently conducting research into food that has been created solely for business (money) purposes.

A warning against blindness through food and art

She does not consider herself a designer. While her work is speculative in nature, generating questions about the future, as an artist she focuses on the “present”.
　
“No matter how ridiculous the comments I received, no matter how many haters there were, I didn’t say anything and let people bash and abuse me on purpose. If they’re really angry, it’ll give them a chance to look into the issues. It’s not my role to go out of my way to explain things again.”
　
In the world we live in today, there are many issues that are being discussed. Issues such as war, climate change, environmental pollution, human rights and inequality are so big that we don’t know where to start, and we may have fallen into the trap of choosing not to do anything. Instead of passing the buck and saying “even if I take action, it won’t make a difference”, we need to change our mindset and ask ourselves “what can I do? Some things that exist ‘naturally’ today will probably disappear from the world in a few years’ time. Eleonora Ortolani continues to advocate the bitter truth using the food that is familiar to us all – ice cream.