Very cool, this. More people need to work on the plastic problem. It seems as much as I try to eliminate plastic products from my life, I end up surrounded anyway.
Photo credit: Ari Jónsson
Plastic bottles can lay around in landfill sites or the ocean for centuries. While our planet struggles to cope with our ever-increasing appetite for plastic, an Icelandic product design student was inspired to create a little something to address the issue.
Ari Jónsson, from the Iceland Academy of the Arts, has harnessed the properties of red algae to create a biodegradable bottle for drinking water. He unveiled his invention at Reykjavik design festival DesignMarch last month. The bottles are made out of agar powder, which derives from the supporting structure in the cell walls of certain species of algae. If this is added to water and allowed to cool, it will eventually set and mould into a jelly-like substance.
The bottle retains its shape when it’s full of fluid but will start to decompose as soon as it’s empty it.
Yeahbut.
Can I still get the deposit back?
Interesting technology. Biodegradable, in the short term is good. Many things biodegrade … over a few million … not so good.
I keep thinking what we could use is better glass and ceramics which are made primarily out of this common, non-toxic material, sand. They are reusable, albeit with considerable water use to clean them after each use. But water is easily recyclable, if we would simply link up to and harmonize with the natural recycling systems, like marshes.
Some of this problem comes from issues with packaging. Why does every liter of water or soda need a separate bottle? Why do we ship containers of mostly water, with a few extra ingredients, across the world to places that have water? Couldn’t we just ship the ingredients?
There are people who carry around water bottles to remind them to stay hydrated. It isn’t a bad thing. But it does raise the question of why cant we make it a thing for everyone, perhaps even a style, to maintain a bottle or container we reuse? I do most of my hydrating from a tall plastic insulated mug I got at a gas station a decade ago. As I remember I got it free with the purchase of coffee.
No solutions in any of that … just brainstorming. So much about our use of plastic and packaging seems, at the very least, odd. Have you contemplated a plastic spoon?
I think this is already done. I seem to recall that e.g. coca cola is made from some kind of concentrate, using local water.
This is pretty cool.
On plastic in general: I drink tap water, so I don’t use plastic bottles. If I’m somewhere I can’t reach tap water and I buy a plastic bottle of water, I will keep reusing ti for as long as I can.
Nevertheless, there are things I can’t avoid buying in plastic : oil, shampoo, tooth paste, liquid detergent. .. Plastic is just everywhere. We’d have to make some serious changes to our consumer habits to change that.
Beatrice:
Exactly. Even when you try to avoid it, you can’t.
The emergency drinking water bottle that rolls around on the back floor of the car is a sealed shop bought quart sized plastic bottle, because it stays clean inside for a long time. Once emptied I reuse them on the bicycle which has a special large bottle cage. I think these seaweed bottles could be a good idea in takeaway shops but I don’t buy small size bottles unless I’m desperate. I’ve tried a stainless steel bottle but I didn’t like the metallic taste left in the water after a week or more in the car.