Environmental groups have shed an unbecoming light on bottled water companies lately. The plastic bottles suck energy, pile up in landfills, and waste...water.
The guilt trip has lead one water company to change its ways. Today, the square-bottle company Fiji Water announced it's goal to go carbon negative in 2008. That means cutting packaging by 20 percent, reducing waste from production, installing a windmill at the bottling plant, and altering shipping routes to lower emissions.
Surprisingly, Fiji Water actually comes from Fiji. The company has teamed up with Conservation International to watch over the Sovi Basin rainforest and the Yaqara Valley watershed where the company's aquifer is located.
“The Yaqara is important to Fiji Water, but the Sovi Basin is important to all of Fiji,” said Glenn T. Prickett, a senior vice president of Conservation International. “The Fijians are poor people, and without this money, logging would be their only economic alternative.”
Regardless of Fiji Water's efforts, bottled water is hard to deem green.
It takes three liters of water to produce a one-liter bottle of water. Globally, 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to make water bottles annually. Americans recycle less than 20 percent of those bottles. Plus, 40 percent of the water in bottles is just filtered tap water.
Yet bottles are pouring off the shelves. Americans drank nearly 26 gallons of bottled water a person in 2005.
“Bottled water is a business that is fundamentally, inherently and inalterably unconscionable,” said Michael J. Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network. “No side deals to protect forests or combat global warming can offset that reality.”
Via NYTimes
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