The London Marathon, one of the sport’s marquee races, sought to reduce the 919,000 plastic bottles used by over 40,000 runners in their 2018 event. For this year’s marathon, they replaced 200,000 bottles with an innovative pouch made out of seaweed.
Dubbed Ooho, these pouches made by Skipping Rocks Lab come from brown seaweed processed to remove color, taste and odor. The end product is a thin, edible membrane that biodegrades in 4-6 weeks. The seaweed used to produce the pouches grows up to a meter a day without requiring fresh water or fertilizer, a far cry from the gallon-and-a-half used to produce a single plastic bottle.
The beverage pouches are designed primarily for those on-the-go or on their feet when attending races or music festivals where they have been previously used to serve sports drinks and cocktails.
