Ooho – Creating the Alternative to Water Bottles
Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez and Pierre – Pves Paslier co-founded and created the biodegradable “edible” water company, Ooho. Designed in the London based Skippy Rocks Lab, Ooho’s goal is to take out the need for plastic packaging of drinking water. With over 29 billion plastic bottles being used a year, over 1 billion of those end up in our oceans. The environmental impact of an everyday water bottle is staggering and the negative effects are piling up in oceans and landfills. To manufacture these bottles over 17 million barrels of crude oil is used. Ooho’s mission is to remove these scourging water bottles from the Earth and create a more environmentally friendly packaging alternative.
The casing of the water is made of 100% plants and seaweed. The tangerine sized orb is clear and can be popped directly into your mouth where it bursts. This edible sphere’s goal is to “stop 1 billion plastic bottles reaching the ocean every year and to stop 300 million kg of CO2 from ever being emitted.”
Ooho Founders and engineer Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Guillaume Couche and Pierre Paslier.
The sustainable packaging process starts by dipping these frozen balls of liquid into the seaweed/plant concoction that will freeze around the water and create a casing. The fundraising for this unique orb has surpassed its goals and is currently over funded on Crowd Cube with over 850 investors and double the initial target with over $1 million raised. Ultimately Ooho would like to replace all plastic packaging from bottles to cups and plates and everything in-between. Right now the spheres can even hold soda and make up based liquids.
Although the idea is viral and has a “saving the world one blob at a time” quality, the concept may not be as air tight as Ooho thinks. The small on-the-go spheres are great for single use events like pop ups (mainly how they are exposed right now), marathons and music festivals – but they aren’t a solution to how we typically use water bottles. Holding the orb, essentially a water balloon, isn’t as convenient as taking a water bottle to work or on a jog. The lofty intentions of Ooho are in the right place – but these blobs have more work to do if they want to replace plastic bottles.
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