A man wearing a face mask walks on a bridge in front of the financial district of Pudong amid heavy smog in Shanghai, China. (Photo : Reuters)
Bottling air and selling it for at least $10 may sound absurd, but in a smog-choked country like China where air pollution is one of the world's worst, this means big business.
Vitality Air, a Canada-based startup launched in 2014, is selling aluminium cans containing fresh air for $20 to $32 each. According to Mashable, one canister can last between 150 and 200 breaths.
The idea started out as a prank by mortgage broker Moses Lam. He first began selling bags of Canada's crisp air on eBay as a practical joke. But 12,000 sold bottles later, that idea is now a huge business in China.
"Our Chinese website keeps crashing," said Vitality Air representative Harrison Wang in an interview with Mashable. "We are getting orders from all over the country, not just from the wealthier cities. When the air is bad, we see spikes in sales."
"The smog is definitely our best advertising," added Wang.
Mashable said that the bottled air appeals to China's upper and middle classes, including athletes and business executives.
Vitality Air is not the only company who has seen an opportunity amid the country's worsening air pollution. In fact, Chinese millionaire Chen Guangbiao came earlier to the party with his idea of canned fresh air.
According to a 2013 report by The Huffington Post, Chen sold the canned product in a variety of flavors, some of which oddly called "post-industrial Taiwan" and "pristine Tibet."
But other than milking cash, Chen's goal was to raise awareness of China's crisis-level pollution.
"Chen said he wanted to make a point that China's air was turning so bad that the idea of bottled fresh air is no longer fanciful," told the Sydney Morning Herald.
China, which issued a red smog red alert in 2015, has declared war against air pollution.
Scientists from the U.S., Canada, China and India said that conditions caused by air pollution already killed 1.6 million people in the country and 1.4 million people in India in 2013, wrote The Guardian.
