Smoky skies has Albertans buying fresh, crisp mountain air

CALGARY — An Edmonton company that sells Alberta air is seeing a spike in sales during wildfire season because people just want a breath of fresh air.

Launched in 2014, Vitality Air’s founders were hoping to cash in on the crisp Canadian air.

“We were looking at bottled water and we said, ‘Why shouldn’t we try bottled air?’ Air and water are heading in the same direction. It’s not getting better, it’s just getting worse,” said co-founder Moses Lam.

Vitality Air started out as a joke — its first sandwich bag of air sold for 99 cents — but has since turned into a full-fledged business. People from China, India, Mexico and the U.S. are buying cans of air harvested from Banff and Lake Louise.

And even though the pickings are a little hazy in the mountain parks right now, Lam said they have clean air on hand because they’re able to collect 200,000 litres at a time, which, once packaged, is good for up to two years.

Lam and his partner, Troy Paquette, then bring the air back to their facility in Edmonton, where they package it into eight-litre bottles fitted with a breathing mask, which are sold for $28.99 a pop — and up.

Lam said since the wildfires in British Columbia have been sullying air quality in Alberta, they’ve seen a rise in Canadian customers — and most of the orders have been coming from Alberta and British Columbia.

“In the last week or so, in Canada, we did close to 200 bottles and we’re used to doing five or 10 bottles a week,” Lam said. “So, it’s a huge spike for us and I think it definitely is correlated to the smoke and the wildfires.”