Algae Sips and Java Brews: A Digestive Food Truck

When bodies digest, they extract nutrients from consumed substances, separating what will be utilized for sustenance from what will be excreted as waste. Digestion is, fundamentally, a process of extraction, one that materially transforms the nature of whatever is ingested. While the systems that regulate it are often unable to distinguish between toxin and aliment easily or definitively, digestion is the body’s most fundamental way of sustaining health, vitality, and wellbeing. While the waste products of organic bodies and their digestive systems are reintegrated into the broader ecological system to continue their cycle, the waste products of built artifacts do not follow the same path. In this project, we propose a mobile food cart functioning as a digestive system that collects sewage and other forms of organic waste from the city, reprocessing it into drinkable beverages. The cart’s versatile structure consists of three sections, each dedicated to digesting and recirculating a specific substance. The first part contains an algae bioreactor nourished by the drainage of growing plants, with its biomass turned into biofuel. The processed spirulina results in taps that offer protein beverages as nutritional superfoods. The second part grows and dries herbs to make tea, cultivated in hydroponic towers and nourished by coffee compost. The third part includes a pour-over coffee stall, the ambient heat of which supports the growth of the algae bioreactor, which, in turn, produces oxygen to reduce air pollution. Overall, the byproducts of one process are redirected as inputs for another: coffee grinds as fertilizing nutrients, water drainage from the hydroponics as input for algae growth and biomass as biofuel. The digestive food truck travels through the city without using electricity or plumbing; instead, it breaks down its own output and reconstitutes it to offer free drinkable liquids to those in need. Reprocessing the food and the waste of a city itself is, in many ways, an ambitious project that entails a radical rethinking of what it means to build a city. Nevertheless, with this little roaming digestive vehicle, we imagine and explore speculative ways in which parts of the built environment may become subject to cultivation, harvest, and consumption.