London: Finished drinking your bottle of water? Now eat it! A design student in UK has developed an edible 'bottle' of water that could rid the world of excess plastic waste.
Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez along with fellow Imperial College London students has been working on the Ooho water bottle for the past few years.
The bottle is made out of edible materials, looks like a jellyfish, and has the potential to put an end to the bottled water industry, 'Smithsonian.com' reported.
Inspired by the juice-filled pearls added to bubble tea and the creations of legendary Spanish chef Ferran Adria, who uses a technique of encasing liquid into edible membranes known as sheperification.
Gonzalez and his team first took a frozen ball of water and dipped it into a calcium chloride solution, which formed a gelatinous layer.
The ball was then soaked in another solution made from brown algae extract, which encapsulated the ice in a second squishy membrane to reinforce the structure.
Keeping the water in the algae solution for long periods of time allows the mold to become thicker and stronger.
"The main point in manipulating the water as solid ice during the encapsulation is to make it possible to get bigger spheres and allow the calcium and algae to stay exclusively in the membrane," Gonzalez said.
Ooho has been tested in some European cities, but the researchers need to perfect it, as their edible bottles still don't hold large amounts of water and can't be resealed.
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