The convenience of bottled water provides a guaranteed and portable way of carrying drinkable water, but there’s no hiding from the fact that plastic disposable is seriously harmful to our environment. In fact, so much so that in San Francisco there is talk about banning them. So what could be the substitution for plastic bottles? Well it seems that one answer lies in an edible water bottle in the shape of a blob called Ooho.
[Image Courtesy of Ooho/DesignLexusAward]
The Ooho is a water drop shaped container that is able to hold water inside the double membrane created by London based FastCompany. Three designers got their heads together to develop a membrane that is made from calcium chloride and brown algae to form a gel around water.
[Image Courtesy of Ooho/DesignLexusAward]
The design has been described as an edible water bottle. The team of three students wanted to come up with something that was durable, sustainable and cheap. They improved on a culinary technique that is decades old and which is called “Spherification” which was first made popular by molecular gastronomy fans at El Bulli. In simple terms, liquid is turned into spheres and then held by a gelatinous membrane, in this case two of them.
[Image Courtesy of Ooho/DesignLexusAward]
The use of a double membrane ensures that it is durable and also offers a way for a label to be placed in between the two membranes when the product is finally ready to hit the shelves.
[Image Courtesy of Ooho/DesignLexusAward]
All you have to do is put the whole Ooho into your mouth, as the container is edible. Alternatively you can poke a hole in the membrane and then just suck out the water. When the company tested it, they did find that using this method means that water goes everywhere, so it does look like it needs some more work before release, however, the lack of waste is a very promising feature worthy of further development.
[Image Courtesy of Ooho/DesignLexusAward]
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