What started as an experiment for two Canadians entrepreneurs has quickly become a business as the demand for clean air in smog ridden Beijing has sky rocketed after the first ever red-alert for air quality was issued from December 8th to December 10th.

Troy Paquette and Moses Lam came up with the idea after friends returning from China complained about the need to wear masks to combat the poor air quality. The duo saw an opportunity and a lark filled a freezer bag with fresh air from the Canadian Rockies and put it on Ebay.  To there surprise the bag of air sold for a whooping $168 at auction and a business was born.

Vitality Air harvests Banff and Lake Louise Canada’s purest air in an undisclosed process and puts it in 7.7 liter canisters with an attached mask that sell for between $16 and $46. The Telegraph reports that their first shipment of 500 bottles was sold out in 4 days and an additional 4,000 bottles en route to China right now are mostly sold.

Its a strange world we are living in when the plot of Spaceballs is a reality.  While this may be a cute article about some Canadian crackpots capitalizing on the natural resources of our neighbor to the north it should also come as a wakeup call that casts a light on the crippling pollution that has left areas in the world to distrust the very air they breath.  One of our favorite organizations that has taken up the flag to combat problems associated with this kind of pollution is Protect Our Winters or POW. They are making great strides with the support of the mountain community and we suggest you support them by going HERE.

You know the smog is bad when you can see it from space.