This is water you can eat. No plastic bottles necessary. Photo: Skipping Rocks Lab
Surfers understand the gravity of the global plastic epidemic better than most. Walking across the beach to the water, and sitting in the ocean for a few hours each day, we see plastic littered across the sand and things that definitely shouldn’t be floating past us in the lineup. Your average surfer would probably not be surprised to learn that in 35 years the oceans will hold more plastic than fish, or that Americans use about 50 billion plastic bottles per year – only 23 percent of which get recycled.
With a little ingenuity, Skipping Rock Labs out of London is out to solve the plastic water bottle problem by changing the way we transport and consume purified water entirely. The concept is a product called Ooho!, which has to be the most common reaction people have after putting the edible water orbs in their pie holes.
The packaging of these little water balls, according to Skipping Rock’s website, is made entirely of plants and seaweed, is cheaper to produce than plastic, is flavorless (but can be flavored for certain liquids), and is biodegradable within 4-6 weeks.
This could seriously revolutionize the way we consume water and other liquids, and you don’t have to think too hard about the application in other industries.
Skipping Rock Labs has already raised nearly $700k (170 percent of their $400k goal) on the crowdfunding site CrowdCube. The Ooho is currently only available at corporate events, trade shows, and pop-up events, but with the level of financial support Skipping Rock has received, it won’t be long before production is scaled, and products are sold to the public in Ooho packaging.
