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Fiji Water announces plan to become carbon negative

Posted at 4:22 PM on 07 Nov 2007

A bold new plan to bypass carbon neutrality and become carbon negative has been announced by, of all things, a bottled-water company. Fiji Water has announced specific goals to pursue renewable energy, forest preservation, and water conservation, and will buy carbon offsets to cover 120 percent of its greenhouse-gas emissions. Which is good and all, says Jon Coifman of the Natural Resources Defense Council, but "it's still hard to justify shipping over a million plastic bottles of water a day from the middle of the South Pacific, when turning on your faucet at home would do just as good a job for a tiny fraction of the cost."

sources: The New York Times, BusinessWire

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Comments: (3 comments)

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Just more greenwash!

No matter how you spin it, bottled water is not "green." I don't care how many offsets they purchase, bottling and transporting a natural resource that already flows cheaply and cleanly from our faucets is a huge waste of resources. And they are just furthering the problem of plastic waste in the environment.

Here's my take on the bottled water issue:

http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/2007/10/think-outside-biot ...

Beth Terry http://www.fakeplasticfish.com

by Beth Terry at 6:38 PM on 08 Nov 2007

We're all responsible for Fiji

Look, I am not a fan of the bottle water industry - but I have bought more than a few bottles of water in my day. But I can't blame Fiji Water for servicing a market that I have helped create. I think Fiji's got some great ideas here, and it would be nice to see other companies adopt practices around renewable energy, etc. At the end of the day, WE are responsible for the bottled water phenom - so, stop buying bottled water. I can't tell you how many "environmentals" I've seen at "green" conferences walk around with throw-away bottles of Fiji or Calistoga. Keep a Kleen Kanteen instead, or - for girls like me who like bubbles - buy from a company like the Seltzer Sisters. At the end of day, there really is nothing like a cool glass of vintage Hetch Hetchy on a hot summer's day in California. Give it a try.

http://blog.bitepr.com/

by Kristina Skierka at 10:31 AM on 09 Nov 2007

Figian Try

I welcome carbon neutralization from any source. Even if it is purely marketing and profit driven, it is unlikely that the net impact will be environmentally counter-productive. I don't buy bottled water, but do you all really drink your tap water? You must not be subjected to anything resembling ours--I can smell it 10 m away. Are you aware of all the carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting contaminants such as industrial chemicals and the byproducts of chlorination, dioxins and trihalomethanes? One of my many unanswered questions, however, is can activated carbon filter elements be recycled? I hate trashing all those organic toxins and heavy metals.

All is one.

by AbajianMD at 9:22 PM on 13 Nov 2007

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