Because the Ooho water bottle membrane is made from food ingredients, you can eat it instead of throwing it away.
We all know that the consumption of non-renewable resources for single-use water bottles and the amount of waste they generate is profoundly unsustainable. The aim of Ooho is to provide the convenience of plastic bottles while limiting the environmental impact. The gelatinous packaging, called the Ooho, is compostable–or even edible, if you want to swallow it. And after two years of development, its designers are ready to bring it to market.
The Ooho prototype for an edible bottle was designed by a trio of London-based design students as an alternative to plastic bottles. They’re made of 100% plant and seaweed material, are biodegradable just like a piece of fruit (it would take 4 days to degrade into the earth) guaranteed 4-days fresh off the shelf, and cheaper than plastic to produce. If you don’t eat your Ooho, the earth will and it’ll be happy with the meal.
The new packaging is based on the culinary technique of spherification, which is also used to make fake caviar and the tiny juice balls added to boba tea. Dip a ball of ice in calcium chloride and brown algae extract, and you can form a spherical membrane that keeps holding the ice as it melts and returns to room temperature.
Ooho is currently marketing its brand innovation at outdoor cafés and events, like marathons in London for example. Those tiny little cups that runners drink from and toss aside during a race will be a thing of the past if Ooho meets its brand goals — soon runners will have handfuls of water that will leave no waste behind at all.
The Ooho teams says that eating the satchel is a novelty for first-time users and they don’t expect people to eat every water bubble in the future, which is why its sustainability is crucial. Because people drink different amounts of water in different situations, the brand is producing Ooho satchels with different volumes suitable for an application. People will be able to choose from volumes that equal about a sip of water, approximately 50 millilitres, or a tall Starbucks, about 150 millilitres.
Ooho is working on an apparatus to produce water satchels on-site at cafés and bars, much like a small espresso machine. Soon we’ll be able to walk into a restaurant and ask for a satchel of water — skip the cup, skip the straw.