Canadians Sell Fresh Air to the Chinese

The sales of the fresh air bottles increased after Beijing issued red alert over pollution for the first time on 7 December. And it's reportedly flying off the shelves in China.

In what sounds like a concept straight out of a sci-fi movie, a Canadian firm is now actually selling "bottled air".

While the company sells its cans in several countries, most of Vitality Air's customers are wealthy women from heavily polluted northeastern and southern China.

He said the next shipment will be 4,000 bottles and approximately 1,000 of them are already pre-sold. Wang said the company sees pollution as an issue in China "and we want to give people the opportunity to inject a little bit of fresh air into their daily lives". After Kanye's Yeezus tour in 2014, concert-goers started selling all manner of air souvenirs from the show, including Ziploc bags filled with "Yeezus air."

As well as China, the company has had sales in countries including Iran and Afghanistan.

Canadian company Vitality Air is selling bottled air and the Chinese are snapping it up. Source Facebook

The year before that, multimillionaire Chen Guangbiao sold pop-sized cans of air purportedly taken from less industrialised regions of China and sold for 5 yuan, or 77 cents.

And with a twitter account like this, no wonder Vitality Air is gaining steam. The then sold a second bag that raked in $168 Canadian dollars ($122).

China declared red alert for .

Wallace Leung, a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told CNN that buying bottles of air was not a practical solution to China's air pollution.

Other critics are even more direct, saying that Vitality Air's product is, at best, a joke, and at worst, a scam.

He says a number of distributors have contacted them to sell their products.

"My parents told me not to quit my day job", he said, adding that despite the success of the product he was still working at a bank in Canada.