Egg

How do you like your eggs?

Annually, an average of 6.4 billion hens lay 1.1 trillion eggs. Simultaneously one third of all food per year is lost or wasted which includes eggs that have a short shelf life and whose fragile shell is not the most suitable protection against processing and transport.

In the project ‘How do you like your eggs’ the content becomes a container, an egg cup is produced from discarded eggs. It explores the extraordinary materiality of an ordinary item of consumption. There is an ambiguity in the symbolism of the egg which embodies on the one hand the beginning of life and on the other hand, becomes swallowed up in cheap consumption.

In the project ‘How do you like your eggs’ damaged and b-stock egg whites and shells are thermoformed into bio-plastic cups with zero additives. In today's context traditional non-degradable plastics are highly problematic, especially because of our throw-away culture; in opposition to this, the project has created a new, fully degradable, bioplastic.

When working with an animal product it is extremely important to be aware of the material origins, through working with it you are becoming directly responsible for the wellbeing of the living creature. That is why one of the most crucial steps of the project was to find a biological and sustainable farm that puts the quality of life of their animals first. The project is in collaboration with a Dutch farming project called GeluksVogel and all the eggs used for the project come from them.

Making process

The fresh eggs are first cleaned and then separated into yolks, egg whites and shells. The egg whites and some of the yolks are emulsified and dehydrated, the egg shells are crushed. After that, the materials are recombined and thermoformed. The albumin protein contained in the egg white polymerises and binds all solids parts into an object.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.