While some of the bottled air trend seems to be tongue-in-cheek, there appears to be a growing market for those looking to sample the air for themselves too.

Vitality is not alone. British firm Aethaer collects air from the UK countryside and sells it for £80 ($103) a jar.

Aethaer founder Leo De Watts began the practice as an “enviro-political artwork”, coining the playful term “air farming” for the method used to capture the air.

Concerned that the scale of global air pollution was hard to comprehend through statistics, he started Aethaer to raise awareness about the issue. The money from the jars of air is reinvested to create cheaper breathing masks.

“[Jars of air] can either be bought for aesthetic reasons or to be inhaled,” says De Watts. “We expect many people [are] buying them as decorative pieces, investments, or gifts.”

He has drawn scorn for selling air, saying critics “feel as though I am a con-artist, cheating people out of their hard earned cash”.

De Watts says the company’s primary market is China, and he doesn’t disclose sales figures. But, he says, “at the end of the day, we are a company selling fresh air to people who can afford it, and anti-pollution facemasks to those who can’t.”