NOT SATIRE - Alberta company bottling air from Canadian Rockies and selling it worldwide
What started off as a bit of a joke has turned into a lucrative business for partners, Moses Lam and Troy Paquette.
They began by selling a Ziploc bag of air on Ebay. "Literally we waved it and then we sealed it up and taped it up," said Lam. The bag sold, after one month, for 99 cents. The second bag, however, netted them $168.
Now, in the last three months their company, Vitality Air, has sold around 900 bottles at $15 a pop. "Our target market is China, India and Dubai, the world's most populated cities," says Lam. He also notes that they have customers in Turkey, Taiwan, Israel and even Alberta.
"It's a long and tedious process, you know. We sit in Banff for about 10 hours capturing the air and then after that we bring it back and we have to fill it into these bottles individually."
Troy Paquette (left) and Moses Lam are the founders of Vitality Air. (CBC)
The bottles are sold with breathing masks. It was only a matter of time before this light-hearted joke of selling air became a reality, with air pollution killing 4,000 people a day in some of the most polluted areas of the world.
The company sells air from two locations; Banff and Lake Louise
Maybe you remember the genius of Mel Brooks' Spaceballs; he saw it coming 30 years ago
