Ooho Seaweed Water Pods
Skipping Rocks Lab, a London-based startup dedicated to decreasing plastic pollution, has just revealed concrete plans for one of the initial biodegradable edible water bottles. What’s the catch? Ooho is a capsule composed completely of flora and seaweed.
When brainstorming Ooho, British innovators Rodrigo Garca González and Pierre-Yves Paslier began looking for a solution to a critical issue. Plastic pollution is starting to have an increasing influence on our everyday lives. With approximate 310 thousand tons of plastic in our seas now. Plastic pollution isn’t only damaging to marine life due to toxin ingestion, but it is also dangerous to humans. It is believed that about one-quarter of all fish sold in marketplaces contain plastic at the moment of sale.
How Edible Water Bottles ‘Ooho’ Was Created?
González and Paslier began looking for sustainable water bottle alternatives in 2014. They eventually devised a procedure known as specification, by which a frozen sphere of water is immersed into a mixture of chemicals before being bathed in an algae-based combination. This procedure forms a natural gel all around water, resulting in a blob that is simple to grip and, eventually, pop.
Ooho eliminates unneeded plastic pollution by biodegrading in 4-6 weeks, similar to fruit. Ooho is also considerably cheaper to create than plastic, costing only 2 cents per piece. And can carry soda, alcohol, and cosmetics, with flavouring and colouring added as appropriate.
As an alternative to disposable bottles, the London Marathon provides edible seaweed drink capsules.
In an effort to decrease plastic waste, almost 30,000 edible drink capsules made from seaweed were distributed to participants at the London Marathon yesterday.
The marathon was the most extensive testing of Ooho capsules, which are biodegradable pods that may be filled with water or other liquids.
You may eat the pods whole or chew into them to get the juice out. The discarded packaging, made of a seaweed-based material, will gradually degrade in four to six weeks – approximately the same period as a piece of fruit.
Marathon runners were given capsules of Ooho with Lucozade Sport.
Capsules containing Lucozade Sport
During the race, the capsules were filled with Lucozade Sport Orange energy drink and distributed to racers from a point 23 miles into the 26.2-mile route.
The capsules were introduced as part of an effort by London Marathon planners to make the year’s event the most sustainable marathon ever.
The overall number of beverage stations was lowered from 26 to 19, including one that distributed edible Ooho pods. In addition, two of the stations provided beverages in biodegradable mugs.
To decrease the marathon’s carbon impact even further, plastic bottles collected in the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Greenwich. And Southwark will be sent to a recycling factory and recycled into new bottles as part of a closed-loop system.
PLA bioplastic decomposes quicker.
They now make their Ooho drink bubbles with a polymer they invented called Notpla. This substance is made from brown seaweed, which decomposes quicker than PLA, one of the commonly used bioplastics.
These edible pouches are created in the following manner:
1) In an ice tray, a mixture of water and Alginate polymer is frozen at -10°C.
2) The ice is immersed in a biochemical combination once the mixture has frozen. “These compounds are present in minute levels in the human body, and the combo is totally safe for human ingestion,” Richard stated.
3) The biochemical combination assists the alginate hydrogel in forming a pouch by covering the ice on all sides. The liquid bag is ready when the ice melts.
4) “We heat it till the alginate develops a membrane around the cube, air bubbles erupt, and they form a spherical shape,” Richard explains to the Bangalore Mirror, explaining that each pod is then placed in a glass of clean water to ensure that no additional gel remains on it.
Replacing water with fruit juice, medication, or sports drinks would need further study and testing, which the team is now undertaking.
Because each pod is as delicate as an egg, the present applications are restricted. Plastic bottles are favoured over glass or clay bottles for this reason.
But it doesn’t imply the water pods’ options are restricted. Following in the footsteps of London, India can also utilise them in marathons.
The pods, as Richard proposed, can also be used for liquid samples. Aside from that, utilising them in social or informal settings and substituting small bottles with two or three water pods may significantly reduce the usage of plastic.
Positive alternatives
With Ooho, Skipping Rocks Lab hopes to make it easier for customers to make healthy choices while also addressing the number of plastic bottles, which are one of the most frequent types of litter discovered in the water. They claim that altering the way we handle our drinks is critical to environmental conservation with their Edible Water Bottles.
The team has created an industrial machine for producing Oohos that can make 100 Oohos in between five and ten minutes.
So, would you choose this over plastic or even a glass bottle?
Is it a good option? Will we see something like this in the close future? Most importantly, will it be cost-effective?
Like, share, and comment on this innovative idea.
Reference
‘Edible Water Bottles’ Is it a solution to Plastic Pollution?