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

Kendal Mitchell (0:08)

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 kombu that they use to make the dashi is the same kombu that is used to make the lamps above them.

Aliza Abarbanel (0:26)

I'm your host, Aliza Abarbanel.

Kendal 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. She's constantly exploring new ways to create circularity with organic materials. Today on the show, Kendal talks about training in sushi, her design work with groups like Ghetto Gastro and the infinite potential within food waste. Kendal Mitchell, this is TASTE, thank you for coming on the podcast.

Kendal Mitchell (1:05)

Thank you for having me.

Aliza Abarbanel (1:07)

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?

Kendal Mitchell (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.

Aliza Abarbanel (2:15)

I think you must have such an interesting brain because I can't imagine looking at an egg shell and thinking this would be a really good bowl. How did you even get that idea?

Kendal Mitchell (2:24)

I think it was 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 Nanda, Chef Tara Thomas. They really took me in and gave me my first real job in the culinary industry.

It was such an incredible experience. We were producing beautiful, incredible, and abundant events.

My job was prepping and helping to produce, but also basically organizing how we manage our waste at the end of the day.

Oftentimes throughout the preparatory process, you realize how many eggshells and onion peels and garlic peels and things that you produce. 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. 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. 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. My idea was this concept of how can we utilize food waste in interior design and into furniture design. At the time, I didn't really know how I would do that, but it did feel like this sort of 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. Instead, it produces methane, which is a gas that is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. By taking that waste out of the trash can and re-contextualizing it and reforming it into design materials, we can not only reduce those carbon emissions, but also re-utilize things that we typically deem as trash. 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 re-utilized that research and use it more so for biocomposites and furniture pieces.

Aliza Abarbanel (4:51)

Just on the basic level, biomaterials, is that like anything naturally produced on earth?

Kendal Mitchell (4:57)

Yes. Biomaterials are materials that are derived from natural resources. This will typically be fungi, plant material, starches and binders that are also made with biopolymers, which are biobased plastics. So biobased plastics are actually just kind of like a funny term for, in my opinion, a lot of the binders that we use in gastronomy.