Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Fiji Water

I'm currently working in a locally owned bakery. To my dismay, we carry Fiji Water. I cringe every time someone purchases it. We have filtered water that we give away for free, yet there is something so drawing for people about having "fresh" water from halfway across the world. It actually disgusts me. It makes me so sad. Why we as North Americans don't count our stock and appreciate that we have clean, safe drinking water from our taps baffles me. That water from Fiji should cost hundreds of dollars considering the environmental impact of shipping and packaging, despite claimed efforts at being "green".

Yet Fiji Water, like most ethically deceptive water companies trying to maintain a place in an unacceptable niche, is promising it is GREEN!

It is unsustainable. No matter how much recycling and limited packaging initiatives are put in place, people in North America drinking water from Fiji is unsustainable. Yet Fiji Water would argue that the water is worth shipping halfway around the world with this ingenious sales pitch:

Far from pollution. Far from acid rain. Far from industrial waste.

There's no question about it: Fiji is far away. But when it comes to drinking water, "remote" happens to be very, very good.

Look at it this way. FIJI Water is drawn from an artesian aquifer, located at the very edge of a primitive rainforest, hundreds of miles away from the nearest continent.

That very distance is part of what makes us so much more pure and so much healthier than other bottled waters.

What a fallacious argument. We have to travel to the most remote place to find CLEAN WATER unaffected by the GARBAGE of industrial pollution which consequently contributes to pollution (however reduced the packaging maybe) further minimizing the world's supply of clean, safe, minerally rich water. WOW! Don't tell me that isn't a cycle leading to complete entropy.

Their site is very devastating to me, because it is truly convincing, powerful green-washing. Can't believe these quotes:

We all make assumptions.  For instance, we assume that bottled water is "better" than water straight out of the tap.  But is it?

The reality is a bit more complicated.  Some bottled waters come right out of municipal reservoirs before they are "purified."  And, even "spring" water is affected by the earth's many pollutants as it bubbles to the surface.

Then there's FIJI Water ... uncontaminated and uncompromised.  Preserved and protected by its source and location, FIJI Water's aquifer is in a virgin ecosystem at the edge of a primitive rainforest, a continent away from the nearest industrialized civilization.  Our rainfall is purified by equatorial winds after traveling thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean.  Winds that carry acid rain and pollutants to other parts of the planet just don't come our way.


The appeal to the emotion is strong; and it is actually an appeal to a connection to nature that we are sadly lacking. But how twisted! Promising a connection to a paradise of "natural" water, while the company is part of the machine destroying the planet worldwide. I want to weep.

1 comment:

  1. From Wikipedia:

    FIJI Water has been criticized for the environmental costs embedded in each bottle. The production plant runs on diesel fuel, 24 hours a day. The high-grade plastic used to make the bottles is transported from China to Fiji, and then (full of water) to the United States and other countries. Activists have also claimed that "while thousands of Fijians do not have access to clean water", the company ships its bottled water thousands of miles to the United States and Europe. In 2008, the company launched a promotional campaign and publicized intentions to become carbon negative, to reduce the size of its packaging 20% by 2010, and to explore recycling opportunities.

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