A UK company has sparked controversy online for selling glass bottles filled with the “freshest coastal air” for up to $105 per bottle.
Coast Capture Air started bottling fresh air and selling it as a souvenir and a talking point about the importance of clean air in the modern era, but then people from polluted areas of the world reportedly started buying these bottles for practical purposes, inhaling the clean coastal air every day. They told the company that it helped counter the harmful effects of air pollution, so it kept selling it and even attached a price tag that seems staggering for what is essentially an empty glass bottle – £75 ($105).
To be fair, Coast Capture Air is far from the only company in the world selling people air. You’ve probably heard of brands like Vitality Air, which sell canned fresh air from the Canadian Rocky Mountains, or Air de Montcuq, which sells air from the French countryside. These are just two of the many canned or bottled air businesses we’ve covered in the past, but what sets Coast Capture Air apart from most of them is the price.
Over $100 for a 700ml bottle filled with air seems preposterous; in fact, it’s so expensive that I am still not convinced that it’s a genuine product. That said, Coast Capture Air does point out that its staff goes to great lengths to make sure that they only bottle the finest coastal air in all of Cornwall.
“Each Coast Capture Air signature glass bottle holds fresh coastal air in its purest form, direct from the natural and unspoiled coast lines of Great Britain,” the company’s website reads. “Our select Air capturing locations are typically rural, unpolluted by man or machinery and often remote and hard to reach. Such idylls are rare. Our Collections are therefore of precious and exceptional quality. Bottled at source: Hartland Point, Cornish Coast, Great Britain.”
“We travel the length and breadth of Great Britain. We visit remote locations of outstanding natural beauty. From here we capture only the cleanest air,” Coast Capture Air claims. “Many factors set us apart from similar companies. We monitor and measure every single bottle we capture. We use highly sensitive equipment to ensure the purity of each bottle. Our captures are therefore both unique and of the very highest quality.”
Interestingly, the Coast Capture Air website even has a section detailing the best way to inhale its selection of fresh coastal air. Apparently, you should find a nice, quiet place, clear your nasal cavity by blowing your nose, breathe from the diaphragm, not from your chest, and make sure to put the cork back after you inhale, to keep the expensive contents from escaping. That’s actually the short version, the long instructions are 10 bullet points-long.
At up to $105 per bottle, Coast Capture Air is the second most expensive bottled air we’ve ever come across. The number one spot goes to Genuine Mountain Air from Switzerland, a business founded by an English expat, which sells Swiss mountain air collected from a secret location in the Alps for a whopping $167 per bottle.
