I remember my parents investing in a nice reusable water bottle for me when I was in elementary school.  It was a blue Klean Kanteen that had a green recycling sign on it. I felt so cool for playing a part in saving the environment and reducing my carbon footprint. However, as I know now, reusable water bottles aren’t as green as they seem. While companies like Klean Kanteen and Sigg are all about recycling, their water bottles are manufactured with completely new materials, even though the aluminum and stainless steel they are made of is vastly available in a recycled form. Not only this, but manufacturing reusable water bottles in factories releases a lot of carbon. Remember those Sigg water bottles I was talking about? According to Kendra Pierre-Louis, “[a] 1 liter Sigg bottle releases roughly .77 pounds of carbon before it’s even left the aluminum smelter.” That’s crazy! Plus, as I read in the first article linked below, using stainless steel is “extremely resource-intensive, relying on open-pit nickel mining and notoriously toxic iron smelting.” So, maybe we need to  come up with a new solution. That is exactly what Skipping Rocks Lab has done. They recently invented an edible water bottle called ‘Ooho!’. It is made out of seaweed and can be manufactured easily and cheaply. In addition to it being tough and cleanly, even if you choose not to eat it, the bottle is biodegradable. Is this the next step in reducing our carbon footprint?
(http://www.treehugger.com/green-home/re … think.html) (http://www.skippingrockslab.com/)

I agree with your thoughts about reusable water bottles, and the alternative, edible water bottles, sounds beneficial as well. However, I would like to know more about the benefits edible water bottles provide, and how they contribute to the reduction of our carbon footprint. The article you provided promoted the product more than explaining the ways they actually do help the environment.

Thanks for your input, Devon! The edible water bottles could decrease our carbon footprint in many ways. According to Discovery, “To create the bottles, spheres of ice are treated with a liquid form of the seaweed-derived membrane. When the membrane solidifies and the water melts, a portable, eco-friendly serving of packaged water remains.” This process does not involve the burning of fossil fuels in factories that releases so much carbon dioxide. On top of that, the manufacturing price is only 2 cents per bottle. Ooho! has these benefits plus all the ones of reusable water bottles. They reduce your amount of waste, as you can just eat it (or throw it away- it’s biodegradable as I said)! They would also cut back on the plastic that sits in landfills for hundreds of years. Right now the company is just starting, but eventually Ooho! could help the earth no matter how small the difference.
(http://www.discovery.com/dscovrd/tech/m … -free-wate r-bottle/) (http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/03/t … ob/388087/)

What a great idea! Edible water bottles can be a huge help to the environment even if you do not eat them. I read that these water bottles could significantly bring down the amount of littering and trash in the ocean. The company is already expanding to some drink companies and they are planning to release the recipe for these eco-friendly water bottles so that you can make them in your own home! This could be a huge step forward in helping the earth and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released while making plastic and reusable water bottles. The company is also expanding to larger edible water bottles which could be beneficial to companies around the world. We need to be the generation that changes the world for the better and Ooho! water bottles can help with this significantly, and they look super cool too.

Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovatio … 85/?no-ist

This is amazing! I have never heard of edible water bottles before, but there seems to be a lot of benefits! This would definitely help to reduce individual carbon footprints, and then we can think about how it would effect our carbon footprint as a nation if we replaced all of our plastic bottles with these!

This is a excellent idea! Making water bottles out of a plant based mixture will not only cut down on the non-decomposable substances we use, but it will also cut down on our accidental chemical consumption. As many know, the water bottles that we use today will leak some chemicals from the plastic into our water when heated. If we do use plant bottles, we won't have this problem because we will not be using the plastics that contain those chemicals. Making us healthier along with the earth as well.