May 17, 2017

Chinese buying fresh air

BBC - A growing number of companies are compressing and bottling fresh countryside air and selling it online. It sounds like a joke (and it has been in the past) but the idea is to raise awareness and provide people with fresh air – at a price.

One such company is Vitality, based in Edmonton, Alberta, which collects air from the Canadian Rockies and compresses it into containers.

A single eight-litre bottle of compressed Canadian air – which comes with a specially designed spray cap and mask – holds around 160 breaths and costs $24 per bottle.

Chief executive Moses Lam started the business to sell the canned air as joke gifts, but demand for the product took off in a surprising way. He says China, India and South Korea have become the company’s principal markets. “Our target markets are places choked with polluted air, and where many people actually pass away prematurely due to pollution.

“Our air is simply an experience that many within China and India will not get to experience,” says Lam.

He now sells 10,000 bottles a month in China and hopes to grow that number to 40,000. They have just started operating in India, where they hope to sell 10,000 bottles a month

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And yet...

Here in the U.S. of A., we are in the process of defunding the EPA?

Anonymous said...

"Don't you know that if people could bottle the air,
they would? Don't you know that there would be an
American Air-bottling Association? And don't you know
that they would allow thousands and millions to die
for want of breath, if they could not pay for air?"
- Robert Ingersoll, 'A Lay Sermon' (1885)