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. With In The New York Times Magazine: Fiji Green
WATER PROOF:
A bottled water criticized by environmentalists tries to detox is image
This week in Consumed, a look at the efforts of the luxury/status water brand repositioning itself as eco-friendly. Is this in response to the much-reported backlash against bottled water? Sort of.
[A spokesman’s] most surprising assertion is that Fiji was already an environmentally conscious company — and that’s part of what has been “frustrating” about the media coverage. He points to various conservation efforts in Fiji, and to the fact that the brand’s entire business model depends on the aquifer there remaining pristine.
Others, of course, point to another unchangeable aspect of Fiji’s model: getting that water to far-flung markets where people will pay a lot of money for it. Fiji’s luxury-chic status has always been directly tied to the idea that this is a rare substance from an exotic place. Which, in turn, is the issue that enrages its critics….
Read the rest in the June 1, 2008, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.
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Reader Comments
Hiya Rob.
This is the second time (that I know) you have written about bottled water in Consumed. I remember a piece you did on Ethos and their strategy of diverting 0.05 cents earned on every bottle to water-based projects in poorer nations. I loved something you pondered about in that article. You asked, “isn’t this all a bit like an S.U.V. whose profits finance third-world alternative-energy projects?” I’d say indeed.
I think the only way to correctly gauge environmental impact is by performing a thorough Life Cycle Assessment, a process that is complicated, expensive and time consuming. The biggest problem is that these are single-use products. Packing material for bottle water includes glass, aluminum, steel and plastic (PVC and PET), with PET gaining ground rapidly as the polymer of choice due to its low weight, high clarity and high strength. Though all these materials are recyclable, in most countries in the world, recycling rates are shockingly low.
I can’t help but think that getting my own reusable bottle and filtering it at home (and yes, carrying it around with me all the time) is less damaging…
Great articles, Rob. Thanks.
An “environmentally concisous” bottled water company is a complete oxy-moron.
Read these two excerpts from a Fast Company article entitled > “Message in a Bottle”
“The Fiji Water plant is a state-of-the-art facility that runs 24 hours a day. That means it requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity–something the local utility structure cannot support. So the factory supplies its own electricity, with three big generators running on diesel fuel. The water may come from “one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth,” as some of the labels say, but out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze.”
“Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.”
Go ahead and try to spin that message.
I think it is like Starbucks. the poor don’t get the money they should from coffee they sell and it’s the same with water. Why sell water? I use a filter.
Also there are chemicals in plastic bottles, like BPA, which causes cancer. therefore it’s not pure, or am I wrong?
People get brain washed, b/c they think they do something good for them self and for the environment, (you c a n recycle the bottle.
Brigitte Del Grosso
Reading/ PA