Plastic. Plastic in the bellies of baby birds; plastic strangling marine animals; plastic leaching chemicals into our water supply. Plastic everywhere. But with Ooho, an edible water ‘bottle’ that just about anyone can make, we could get a handle on the plastic mess – at least a little one.

 

Winners of a Lexus Design Award 2014, Spanish students Rodrigo García González, Pierre Paslier and Guillaume Couche reworked a concept that has actually been around for a while in order to create a water receptacle that is cheap, easy to make, durable, and biodegradable.

 

Replicating both the design and function of a single water drop, Ooho is a “new way of packaging that propose an alternative to the plastic bottle,” the students write in their design brief.

 

Using the culinary technique of spherification, which involves combining sodium alginate from brown algae with sodium chloride, creates a double gelatinous membrane that might not sound very delicious, but it is edible, and it is also incredibly strong.

 

Water is frozen before it is sealed in the membrane, making it easier to work with.

 

The team likens the edible blob to an egg yolk that is secured in a membrane.

 

“The double membrane protects the inside hygienically, and makes it possible to put labels between the two layers without any adhesive,” García said.

 

While the sphere isn’t very easy to use – it is unwieldy and tricky to pierce without water gushing over the front of your shirt, the students envision a future where the design could be perfected by every day people in their own kitchens.