Canadians Troy Paquette and Moses Lam have discovered a potential gold mine that all started with an idea. A joke, actually. Taking advantage of China's pollution problem, the business partners started selling bottles of Canadian air, bottled in the Rockies and Lake Louise in Banff, to residents of smog-ridden areas of the country, according to the Atlantic.
It started out as a joke, selling sealed plastic bags of air on eBay. The first sold for 99 cents, but the second sold for $168 after a bidding war. This prompted the duo to create Vitality Air in 2014, a company specializing in selling bottled air.
Lam, an Edmonton resident, makes a four-hour trip to Banff once every couple of weeks and spends 10 hours bottling the air, according to CNN. "It's time consuming because every one of these bottles is hand bottled," Lam said. "We're dealing with fresh air, we want it to be fresh and we don't want to run it through machines which are oiled and greased."
A can provides about 150 sprays and can go for up to $14 depending on size, with the double pack going for as much as $43. It is not cheap, which is why it is mainly wealthy Chinese women who buy bottles for their families or give them away as gifts. Night clubs and senior citizen homes are also prominent customers. The first shipment of 500 bottles of air was sold out in less than a week, with 4,000 more on the way, according to the Atlantic.
What makes all this possible is China's chronic pollution problem. The use of coal on such a large scale has created poisonous smog in urban and industrial areas. Beijing just recently issued its first ever red alert for smog, which closed schools and restricted traffic and construction. The pollution is so bad that it is estimated that 4,000 people die per day as a result of the air pollution, reported the Inquisitr. And things will get worse as it gets colder. The increase in coal used for heating will substantially increase the smog levels.
Critics of Vitality Air range from calling it a joke to a flat-out scam. Lam's response is simply, "If China can import food, water, why shouldn't they have the right to import air?"
