About two years ago, WikiFoods, a weird little lab in Paris, started getting a lot of attention, because its founders invented something designed to change how we eat. They called it WikiCells, and it was an edible packaging technology intended to make plastic-packaging obsolete—or at least optional.

Now that technology is being sold at Whole Foods. WikiFoods is collaborating with Stonyfield, the New Hampshire purveyor of organic dairy products, to create Frozen Yogurt Pearls. The Pearls use the same soft, thin, and edible packaging that WikiFoods debuted last summer for their own WikiPearl ice cream balls. Each one wraps a scoop-sized amount of Stonyfield’s frozen yogurt in a coconut, strawberry, or peach flavored packaging. By September, they'll be available in 35 Whole Foods locations in the northeast.

Created by Harvard professor Dr. David Edwards, the WikiCell (or WikiPearl) packaging acts like a thin membrane, wrapped around softer foods like yogurt or mousse. It’s made from fruits or vegetables, and is designed to be washed—just like a fruit or vegetable. The WikiFoods team envisions that one day, these individually packaged items of food will be sold in bulk bins—just like granola, or dried fruit—and that customers will stock up by shopping with their own tupperware or reusable bags. It’s a utopian, cradle-to-cradle approach to eliminating waste created from food packaging. It’s also one retailers and shoppers aren’t ready for yet.

Earl Studios/Stonyfield

“If you say to somebody, go over to the produce section and pick up a pear or an apple, no one thinks twice about picking it up and putting it in the bag,” says Stonyfield chairman Gary Hirshberg.1 When Hirshberg and the Wiki team tested that in Paris, however, “everyone was worried about sanitation and cleanliness. Culturally, to go to a store and have no wrapping is tough for people.”

For now, the pearls come in a carton, which the company says is an intermediate step. Earl Studios/Stonyfield

To avoid wigging out consumers (and to create a marketing opportunity along the way), WikiFoods and Stonyfield came up with what Hirshberg calls an “evolutionary step”: a biodegradable package made from sugar cane cellulose that Hirshberg says is a little like dried pancake mix. (The first round of Pearls actually came in a cellulose wood pulp packaging, but Stonyfield is swapping it out for the sturdier sugar cane material.) Experimenting with organic packaging like this is in Stonyfield’s DNA; all of the brand’s yogurts are currently sold in plant-based plastic containers.

But, biodegradable or not, the end goal for Stonyfield and WikiFoods is still to kill the container. That question—What can these companies do to persuade customers to take a Wiki-wrapped food item right off shelf?—is top of mind for Hirshberg. He has two ideas. The first is to set up WikiFood cases in fast-casual restaurants like Sweetgreen, the farm-to-table salad chain that started in Washington, DC (Hirshberg is on their board), so that diners can add one or two to their tray of food, for dessert.

The second is simply to get customers craving Frozen Yogurt Pearls. Hirshberg and Dr. Edwards might dream of a world with zero packaging waste, but someone who's shopping for ice cream ultimately just wants a damn good dessert. So, “we just need to get a lot of them in a lot of people’s mouths,” Hirshberg says. “Finish the yogurt, eat the cup—that’s the dream. It’s something that I’ve been talking about since 1983. But we have to adjust to the reality of the shelves and the consumer.”

1Correction 13:30 EST 09/02/14: An earlier version of the story incorrectly spelled Gary Hirshberg's name.