EDIBLE WATER ORBS
25 Mar 2015
With a membrane made from algae, this edible water ball hopes to put a stop to the billions of plastic water bottles that are thrown away each year.
When we drink bottled water, we throw away the plastic, and 80 per cent of the bottles are not recycled. Ooho! uses the culinary technique of sphereification to encapsulate the water in a hygienic, double gelatinous membrane. The membrane is created by combining combine sodium alginate (E-401) which derives from brown algae with calcium chloride (E-509) to generate a gelification on the exterior of the liquid. The final package is simple, cheap, resistant, hygienic, biodegradable and even edible.
Ooho! still has teething problems, as the membrane is only as thick as a fruit skin, and therefore makes transporting the object more difficult than a regular bottle of water.
“This is a problem we're trying to address with a double container,” Rodrigo García González, who created Ooho with fellow students Pierre Paslier and Guillaume Couche, explained to the Smithsonian. “The idea is that we can pack several individual edible Oohos into a bigger Ooho! container [to make] a thicker and more resistant membrane.” Other challenges include devising a way to make the bottle re-sealable, and keeping the skin sanitary on the go.
“There's still a lot things with the engineering of the membrane that we need to improve,” González said.
Ooho! is licensed as creative commons so anyone can make one at home, modifying and innovating the recipe. Preparing Ooho! at home also has a climate benefit, as it doesn't involve the fossil fuels and CO² emissions of the bottle-manufacturing process.
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