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Businessman selling jars of British air to the Chinese

By Ben Hooper
Air being "harvested" in the British countryside. Screenshot: Aethaer/YouTube
Air being "harvested" in the British countryside. Screenshot: Aethaer/YouTube

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DORSET, England, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- A British entrepreneur said he is raking in the cash by selling 20-ounce jars of British countryside air to pollution-stricken Chinese customers for $155 each.

Leo De Watts, 27, a Dorset, England, native living in Hong Kong, is selling the jars of air harvested from the British countryside for about $115 apiece, and he said many of his products are bound for Beijing, Shanghai and other areas with heavy pollution.

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Watts' company, Aethaer, harvests the jars of air from various locations in England and Wales.

"Quite often a lot of our orders are bespoke -- we have clients who request very particular circumstances for their air," De Watts said in a video on Aethaer's website. "Sometimes we'll be at the top of a mountain, other times the bottom of a valley."

Watts, who sells the air jars at Hong Kong street markets, said he is offering a Chinese New Year special -- 15 jars for $12,000.

"Aethaer is filtered organically by nature as it flows between the leaves of woodland trees, absorbs pristine water as it passes over babbling brooks and forest streams, and is lovingly caressed as it rolls over and between mineral rich rock formations, after which it is blown up over vistas of untouched beauty to where the Aethaer is collected and bottled," the company's website states.

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Watts said he has sold 180 jars of air since the company's inception a few weeks ago.

"There is a serious point to this though as Beijing, Zhuhai, and Shanghai are the major places where pollution is quite bad, whether it is the fault of the rest of the world or its China's responsibility, we have a case of people living in smog," he told the Dorset Echo.

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