Runners In the 2019 London Marathon encountered something different at one hydration station. Instead of plastic bottles of water, they got clear bubbles called Oohos filled with Lucozade energy drink to pop in their mouths. The whole thing was edible, but it didn’t matter whether the runners ate the packaging or not (about 30-40% did). The bubbles, if discarded on the ground, can be cleaned up like leaves or will biodegrade within six weeks.

Pierre-Yves Paslier, a former packaging engineer at L’Oréal, and designer Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez were studying innovation design engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art when they created the edible membrane in 2013 using a technique from molecular gastronomy.