Liquid storage blobs could kill the plastic bottle
Plastic water bottles will be replaced with wobbly blobs, if a team of European designers get their way.
A new biodegradable water container called the ‘Ooho’ is gaining popularity overseas.
Ohoo is an advanced membrane packaging for liquids made from water, calcium chloride and brown algae, forming a double-layered, biodegradable, edible, gelatinous container.
Reports with the Ohoo team - big names in the design world since their creation won the Lexus Design Award 2014 - said the inspiration for their entry came from nature. They created Ohoo to encapsulate liquid using membranes, like an egg yolk or eyeball.
To achieve the double gelatinous membrane they used sodium alginate from the brown algae and calcium chloride in proportions that could generate jellification.
Ohoo is not so much a product as a recipe.
Its creators wanted to have a container that people could make (or more accurately; cook) at home.
The intention is to cut down on the ever increasing piles of plastic water bottles being bought and discarded every day.
Ohoo came about after experiments with different portions and dimensions of the brown algae, calcium chloride and water ingredients to develop a suitable double gelatinous membrane. An estimated cost to make this water ball is not exactly prohibitive – around two cents a unit.
Check out the video below to see the functionality (and challenges!) of the intriguing new storage idea;