I was browsing one of my regular news sites, NPR.org and saw an ad for Fiji Water’s fijigreen.com. Huh? Ok, here we go again, more corporate green washing…
Bottled water is one of the cleverest and most successful beverage marketing schemes ever conceived. Something that flows clean and and nearly free from the tap, (in some places of the world anyway, but that’s another issue) has been hyped, packaged and sold as a healthy and exotic refreshment. The trend has been around for several years now with brands such as Evian and Perrier sold in Europe and many smaller companies in the US joining in with spring and mineral waters. Then the expansions: European brands were exported to the US and not to be outdone, Pepsico and Coca-Cola joined with massive efforts of their own with their Aquafina and Dasani brands respectively. But is this water better for you than municipally treated tap water? No, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s ‘real cost of bottled water’. The US EPA has higher standards for tap water than bottled.
As with many exotic or luxury goods there is a preference simply because they are more expensive, referred to in economics as Veblen goods. Think of expensive cars or designer purses. These goods are in higher demand because they are perceived to be out of reach to many and therefore better and more desirable. Once again, are bottled waters better? Coca-Cola has admitted that its Dasani water is merely municipal tap water.
Fiji has now taken on the task of spin control with it’s latest efforts at fijigreen.com. There is a blog, which surprisingly allows comments both negative and positive, and a section about their promise and progress for the environment. In this section, Fiji has pledged to reduce their carbon footprint, sponsor rainforest conservation efforts on that island, and promote recycling of plastic water bottles. This is very noble of them, but when it comes down to it, their water still travels halfway around the world to your local supermarket or corner shop at a highly profitable price point. A fellow blogger has crunched some numbers to calculate the resource inputs and costs of Fiji water specifically. Presumably due to articles such as this, the aforementioned SFGate article, and others, Fiji has decided to take the the defense witness stand to tout their ‘progress’ with the environment. This is another classic case of green washing, becoming more prevalent from corporate PR departments to satiate consumers’ concerns for greener living.
American’s throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles in the bin per hour, that’s more than 2 billion per year in the US alone. This is one small category of plastic container that is used by the consumer for about an hour then tossed in a landfill to last 700 years or more. (source: Clean Air Council)
Bottled water is expensive, irresponsible, and wasteful. What happened to those municipal deposit programs for glass soda bottles I remember so well as a child? We’d load up the Coke and Pepsi bottles for our next trip to the grocery store to receive $.05-$.10 per bottle. Ireland has a plastic bag tax of €.22 for grocery carrier bags, why not a plastic bottle tax? Better yet, grab a reusable bottle and fill it from the tap. It’s easy and costs 10,000 times less…
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