This Edible Water Bubble Is Looking to Crush the Plastic Bottle Industry Once and For All (VIDEO)

Plastic water bottles are so ubiquitous that it is hard to imagine a world without them. But now that 300 million tons of plastic are produced globally every year and 8.8 million tons end up in the oceans threatening the lives of marine animals, it’s certainly time for us to start imagining a world without it. What if our water came in … edible bubbles?

This is exactly the idea behind Ooho! – Skipping Rocks Lab’s invention, which is a shape of a pliant, transparent globe of fluid. It consists of two membrane layers made of sodium alginate, a substance obtained from brown algae and calcium chloride. The jelly-like consistency of the water bubble is accomplished through the process of gelification, which comprises of adding an edible gelling agent to liquids. What is achieved through all that is, to put it simply, a squishy blob of water that can be consumed whole!

The inventors of this fascinating creation are three engineers from London – Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Pierre Paslier, and Guillaume Couche. They explain on their crowdfunding page that the water enclosed in the globules can be consumed by “tearing a hole and pouring it into your mouth” or the sachet can be consumed in its entirety as the membrane is completely edible. They also emphasize that this form of packaging is “cheaper than plastic” and can be used for any beverage, not just water – and even other liquids, like cosmetics.

This curious product could be quite a revolution on the market. Every water globule contains 250 milliliters of water and costs only around two cents to produce. The retail price is not yet determined and the inventors of the product are currently in the middle of raising funds so that they can bring Ooho! to consumers. They are aiming to get the product to the market within a year.

To learn more about Ooho!, visit the company’s Twitter account. And for more ways to cut plastic out of your everyday life, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign.