We’ve looked extensively at how much of a problem disposable water bottles can be for the environment in many of our previous articles. Perhaps the most obvious response to this problem is to just pick up a reusable water bottle, which will severely cut down the amount of waste you produce from disposable bottles. However, even reuseable water bottles eventually run their course, and they can end up as waste. Even with the possibilities of recycling, we still run up against the issue of waste from containers.



So What’s the Deal With Edible, Biodegradable Water Bottles?

If you think about it, on some level any type of container is undesirable. You really don’t want a hunk of plastic or metal – you just want a drink of water, a bite of food, or whatever else you happen to be toting around in your container. Wouldn’t it be ideal if we could do away with containers? How about a 100% biodegradable, food safe, evencontainers? Sound like science fiction? Until pretty recently, it basically has been, but with a little help from the internet, you can make these space-aged water bottles at home in your very own kitchen.

You are probably already familiar with the idea of biodegradable products. The idea is pretty ingenious: make products which can be broken down (degraded) naturally by the environment the product is already in. Biodegradable technologies have made themselves at home in all sorts of products, from packing peanuts to lunch containers and all other sorts of disposable materials which can simply clog up landfills.



Meet the Water Blob Edible Water Storage Solution

Biodegradable plastics are awesome, and companies like Enso Plastics are working to make disposable plastic water bottles biodegradable. However, this type of biodegradable plastic is not what the headline of this article alludes to! While we may hopefully see a future where all disposable plastic water bottles are also biodegradable, that is still a ways off. But you can make something biodegradable, edible, and pretty darn impressive right in your kitchen.

So what the heck is a water blob? It might be easier to see it for yourself:

In the video above, we see a product called Ooho! by Skipping Rocks Lab. Ooho! is essentially a little membrane filled with water. The membrane consists of an organic, biodegradable seaweed and calcium chloride. The result is a little blob of water you can carry with you anywhere. When you want to take a drink, you simply pierce the membrane open and gulp down the contents. When you’re done, you can eat the membrane! Or simply throw it away, where it will breakdown rapidly.

Ooho! is a pretty neat product, and hopefully we will see something like it available at large. For now, Ooho! is not yet for sale, but for those who just can’t wait to try a water blob, there is a DIY method.

DIY Water Bottles: Saving the Environment with Science!

Inspired by the Ooho! some clever folks at the Inhabitat blog decided to see if they could replicate something similar in their kitchen. Lucky for us, they managed to do so, and even luckier they have shared the recipe and made a super easy to follow video which allows pretty much anybody to make these cool things at home.



The process is pretty simple, but requires two ingredients most people probably don’t have on hand. However, they are available pretty cheap online. The first is Sodium Alginate (~$25 on Amazon.com) and the second is Caclium Lactate (~$15 on Amazon.com).

View the full recipe with step-by-step instructions at Inhabitat or check out this video:

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This amazingly simple recipe yields an awesome sci-fi-esque edible water bottle great for demonstration and a fun project, if a little impractical!