848: Kendal Mitchell Turns Eggshells Into Servingware: A Design Intervention for Food Waste

This Is TASTE

Chef and biomaterials researcher Kendal Mitchell joins the show to discuss her innovative project, Bringing Food Waste Back to the Table, which transforms restaurant byproducts like eggshells and oyster

Key takeaways

• Mitchell repurposes food waste using biopolymers like agar-agar, gelatin, and calcium carbonate to create durable biocomposites from eggshells and oyster shells.
• Her project originated during a Parsons course on Food and Justice, where she designed an intervention for the restaurant industry's massive methane-producing waste streams.

Main topics

• Biomaterials research and biocomposite creation
• Food waste circularity and methane reduction

Notable quotes

"Hopefully one day I get to the point where if you go to an oyster bar all the stools are made from oyster shells."

Conclusion

Mitchell's work offers a practical, visually compelling blueprint for closing the loop between

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:07) Hopefully one day I get to the point where if you go to an oyster bar all the stools are made from oyster shells or if you're going to a Japanese restaurant they tell you the the kombu that they use to make the dashi is the same kombu that is used to make the lamps above them. Speaker 2 (0:24) This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel. Speaker 2 (0:35) Kendall Mitchell is a chef and biomaterials designer based in Brooklyn. Her series, Bringing Food Waste to the Table, turns often wasted ingredients like eggshells and oyster shells into stunning tableware. And she's constantly exploring new ways to create circularity with organic materials. Today on the show, Kendall talks about training in sushi, her design work with groups like Ghetto Gastro, and the infinite potential within food waste. Speaker 2 (1:02) Kendall Mitchell, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to have you in the studio today. I think we're going to have a really fun and hopefully kind of nerdy food conversation. I think you're the only person who has brought me a plate made from eggshells before. Probably because I didn't know that existed up until you brought it into the studio today. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Speaker 1 (1:25) Yeah, so I am a chef and biomaterials researcher. I went to school for environmental studies and food studies at Parsons School of Design, and I finished with a concentration in biomaterials research. I currently am working on a project called Bringing Food Waste Back to the Table, where I repurpose food waste from the restaurant industry, so often food byproducts that are traditionally thrown away, such as eggshells, oyster shells, crab. All of the peels and pits and things that typically end up in the trash, I reutilize and recontextualize into design materials that can be reintegrated back into the experience of eating. So I brought you some of my eggshell and oyster shell plates today so that you can feel them and get a sense of how they are in real life outside of. the imagery on Instagram. I Speaker 2 (2:15) think you must have such an interesting brain because I can't imagine looking at an eggshell and thinking this would be a really good bowl. How did you even kind of get that idea? I think it Speaker 1 (2:24) was. Speaker 1 (2:26) The product of a series of events. Around 2023, I started working with a lot of incredible chefs, people that you are likely familiar with, Wolde Reyes, Mariah Nonda, Chef Tara Thomas. They really took me in and gave me my first real job in the culinary industry. And it was such an incredible experience. We were producing beautiful, incredible and abundant events. And my job was sort of. prepping and helping to produce, but also basically organizing how we manage our waste at the end of the day. And oftentimes throughout the preparatory process, you realize how many eggshells and onion peels and garlic peels and things that you produce. And instead of throwing them away, I wanted to really think about how we can reutilize those materials and bring them back into the design experience of these tablescapes that we were producing. And at the same time, I was taking a course called Food and Justice at Parsons. And we had a final project where we were supposed to design an intervention for a waste stream. And of course, at the time working in the restaurant and culinary industry, I decided how do I basically develop a design intervention for food waste. And so my idea was this just concept of how can we utilize food waste. in interior design and then into furniture design. And at the time, I didn't really know how I would do that. But it did feel like this sort of aha, like transformative moment for me, especially considering how much carbon emissions food waste truly produces. Every year, we throw away billions of pounds of food, and that food does not have the conditions in a landfill to properly break down. And so instead, it produces methane, which is a gas that is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. And so by taking that waste out of the trash can and recontextualizing it and reforming it into design materials, we can not only reduce those carbon emissions, but also reutilize things that we typically deem as trash. And I eventually, over time, started taking more biomaterial research courses, which at the time also were more focused on textiles and fashion. But I instead reutilize that research and use it more so for biocomposites and furniture pieces. Speaker 2 (4:51) And just on the basic level, biomaterials, is that like anything naturally produced on Earth? Speaker 1 (4:57) Yes. So biomaterials are materials that are derived from natural resources. So this will typically be fungi, plant material, starches and binders that are also made with biopolymers, which are biobased plastics. So bio-based plastics are actually just kind of like a funny term for, in my opinion, a lot of the binders that we use in gastronomy. So things like agar-agar, gelatin, sodium alginate, calcium carbonate, things that you often see in cooking is what we typically will use as our biopolymers in the biomaterial research. bioscience world. And that was another huge through line for me, this idea of, hey, we are using recipes in biomaterial research. We are using binders and materials that we are often using in cooking as well. And so for me as a chef and as a scientist, there felt like a huge through line to make biomaterial research more accessible and to make it more understandable for the majority of people. Speaker 1 (6:07) Yeah, that was a really exciting, exciting discovery. Speaker 2 (6:10) Yeah, I love the idea of thinking about a recipe, not just for something that you eat, but something that is being used with those kinds of ingredients in a different kind of way. And just thinking about your work as a chef and also as a biomaterials designer, I want to maybe take a step back. And I'm curious if you could tell me about the chef side of your work. Like, do you remember? developing an interest in food at a certain point in your life? Or how did you begin to kind of work as a chef in that space? Speaker 1 (6:38) Yeah, so I am actually from Atlanta, Georgia, from Southwest Atlanta. But mostly my family comes from Harvey, Illinois and Chula, Mississippi. I would say growing up, I didn't have the strongest connection to food, especially growing up in a food apartheid. So most of my knowledge and access to food was... like fast food. And I mostly would have, we usually maybe have to drive about an hour just to get to the closest Walmart. And so having a strong connection and having a strong connection to food access was not something that was very prevalent for me at a young age. And eventually, closer to high school, I got a full ride to go to Deerfield Academy, which is a boarding school in Massachusetts. That was my first time really thinking about my food landscape and the way that we think about our food systems, agroecology, agriculture. I joined a club called LEAF, which is Leaders Eating Ethical Foods. And that was a huge introduction to films such as like Cowspiracy, Seaspiracy, What the Health. All of the Spiracies. All the Spiracies, Food Inc. The first time I had access to information that really made me. understand and think about our food landscape and really thinking about sustainability in the food, in our food system. And eventually, I also ended up going to Italy for a while. I applied to go to a program called SYA, which is school year abroad. And that was an extremely transformative experience for me because I didn't really understand the concept of seasonality. And the idea that we really shouldn't have access to everything all the time. And there's such a beauty in that. There's a beauty in being able to go forage for mushrooms in the fall and being able to eat persimmons and figs and plums at their ripest and at the best time of year. And then moving into later seasons and having pumpkin. And it's just... It's just there's such a beauty in eating with the seasons. And that's not something that I really grew up with. And that was really huge for me at the time. And so that's, I would say, where I really began having more of an interest in a culinary career and really learning how to cook in a more professional sense. I spent a lot of time with my host mother cooking and learning from her. And that's something that I ended up carrying with me. when I ended up coming back home. And yeah, I would say that's my first introduction to really getting into food, but also specifically thinking about sustainability in our food system. Speaker 2 (9:29) Yeah, it's so interesting to think about the ways that... Being able to live in tune with the land or being so removed from the land impacts the way that we're able to eat and kind of exist. And I can even imagine like after having that experience and eventually moving to New York, like, you know, I think being in the city at once, we feel really far removed from our food systems. And at the same time, there is so much urban farming happening here or different communities that are able to share their food here. Do you feel like coming to New York? kind of introduced a new chapter in terms of your relationship with food? I Speaker 1 (10:03) absolutely would say so. Coming to New York gave me more access to be able to support community-supported agriculture. I lived really close to the Union Square Green Market, and I would spend so much time there just walking around, looking at the produce, really exploring and paying attention to the changing seasons and what I have access to at different months. How did you begin Speaker 2 (10:30) to develop the relationships with chefs and food people to give you raw materials to be like turning into plates and bowls and things like that? Speaker 1 (10:39) I would say initially I started just collecting from the people that I was working with at the end of a dinner or an event or a showroom production. I would just say like, hey, like, can I take this home with me? And oftentimes, even if I didn't know what I was going to do with it, I would just figure out a way to like dry it or preserve it or I would keep them in my freezer. Currently, my freezer is completely filled to the brim with eggshells. There is no food in my freezer. And those are just waiting to be to be processed. And that was the initial I would say that was the initial beginnings of me. collecting is the best way to describe it. And eventually I started doing my own production and my own events. So