Ever get sick of hearing your empty Sigg clanging around your bag? Well, that sound may be replaced by a calming sloshing sooner than you think. Ooho, the first project from start-up Skipping Rocks Lab, is already on its way to changing how we carry (and consume) water: The makers dub it "water you can eat."
More blob than bottle, Ooho (which isn't yet available to the public) is a whole new kind of packaging — it's made from algae, it costs about one cent per container to make, and it's edible. If you can't picture it, check out the video below. To be fair, the brave tester seems to be slurping the blob rather than eating it, but it's a straw-less slurp, which is still a first in our book.
We know, at first glance this looks like a big, flavorless Gusher, but its design is by no means a gag. Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. However, only about 9% of all our plastic waste was recycled in 2013. While initiatives to encourage recycling abound in an attempt to increase that number, the complete elimination of the plastic bottle is a better long-term goal.
As more schools and even cities ban water bottles, could Ooho find a market for itself? If its recent win at the World Technology Awards is any indication, we all might be slurping, rather than sipping, our water in the future.
Correction: This article has been modified to correct that the startup that developed Ooho is called Skipping Rocks Lab, not Kicking Rocks Lab.