What if the packaging dissolved into your soup — and you never noticed?
The Opportunity
Single-use packaging in convenience food has no viable end-of-life. It is used for five minutes and persists for decades. The question we started with was deliberately extreme: could packaging be designed to disappear entirely during preparation — not recycled, not composted, but consumed with the product?
The Solution
Working with Notpla and Milk, we developed a ready-made soup concept using water-soluble film as primary packaging. Add hot water, wait five minutes, and the packaging becomes part of the meal. The film is made from seaweed-derived polymers that dissolve completely at 80°C — leaving zero residue and zero waste. No sorting. No collection. No end-of-life infrastructure required.
The Impact
The concept eliminates post-consumer packaging waste entirely — not by improving recycling rates, but by removing the need for recycling altogether. It proves that packaging and product can be one and the same. The project was developed as a proof of concept; commercial application depends on scaling the material supply and adapting the format to fill-line requirements.
Picture credit: https://www.milk-food.de/