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ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
Water bubbles seek tiny environmental footprint
Skipping Rocks Lab’ s Ooho offers an alternative to combat the proliferation of individually bottled water worldwide.
By Mike Flenniken
Russ Chaney
In the spirit of the sharing of unique experiences that shape the plumbing industries in our respective nations, the following article looks at a startup company’ s efforts to move the world away from disposable water bottles. Written by IAPMO staff writer Mike Flenniken, it is the next in a regular series of similar articles that will run in this magazine.
A London-based start-up company is looking to burst the bottled water industry’ s bubble.
Using a membrane that consists of plant and seaweed extract, Skipping Rocks Lab has created the Ooho, an edible water bubble that its creators hope will help make a dent in the billions of plastic water bottles that are used around the world each year.
Oohos are designed to be peeled like a fruit, and the outer membrane is edible and tasteless. Grossed out by the thought of eating the seaweed membrane? No problem; the membrane will biodegrade within four to six weeks, just like a piece of fruit. A plastic water bottle, on the other hand, takes hundreds of years to decompose.
The water bubbles can be flavoured and coloured, and Skipping Rocks is developing Oohos that are varied in size and in thickness of the membranes, as well as some that have multiple layers. The membrane also is capable of holding liquids other than water. In addition to creating onetenth of the carbon dioxide emissions as plastic bottles, they are no more expensive to create, the company says.
Created in 2014 as part of the Climate-KIC Accelerator programme founded by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology( EIT), Skipping Rocks Laboratory has been working out of Imperial College in London. The team consists of chemists, engineers, and an advisory board.
“ Water is something very essential, but we use very, very energy-intensive and precious materials for just drinking on the go,” he said during his Collaborative 2016 talk in Boston.
Individually bottled water did not exist 40 years ago, he said, and consumption is increasing all over the world.
“ The whole market has been completely created out of thin air; the growth is about 10 % per year, and with a lot of emerging countries who are rapidly reaching the same kind of level of consumption that we have in the US or in Europe, it’ s really a global problem.”
Paslier said Ooho was initially a student project that they did not think they would pursue long term, so they shared their experiments online with Creative Commons, showing people how to make them at home.
Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, an inventor, designer, architect, and engineer, and Pierre-Yves Paslier, an innovation design engineer, co-founded Skipping Rocks and serve as co- CEOs. Through Climate-KIC, they teamed up with energy finance professional Lise Honsinger, who now serves as chief operating officer / chief financial officer.
Paslier said during their research, they learned that to make a 1l bottle requires 7l of water in the manufacturing process and half a litre of crude oil.
Skipping Rocks Lab
February 2018 Volume 23 I Number 12 www. plumbingafrica. co. za