If Water's Flying, Money Must Be Flowing
In our last issue of Aquabits, we related a story of bottled water executives commiserating at a conference about how the high cost of oil was cutting into profits.
“What?” you say.
“Oh, yes,” we say. All that oil gets used for things like making plastic bottles to fill with water, making plastic trays to hold plastic bottles of water, and filling trucks with diesel fuel to transport plastic trays of plastic bottles of water. E magazine reported that just making plastic water bottles for Americans consumes about 17.6 million barrels of oil per year (enough fuel for more than one million cars for a year). And, that’s before you calculate how much oil it takes to ship all that water around, of which we ship 22 million gallons globally every year.
But, when you buy Fiji water, are you at least supporting some little company in Fiji?
Nope, turns out you are supporting a rather wealthy couple in L.A., according to the final installment in a three part San Francisco Chronicle series on bottled water (L.A. business tries to make Fiji Water a star – 01/21/07).
![Fiji [blog]](/water/images/fiji.jpg/image_mini)
vs. ![Downtown Los Angeles [blog]](/water/images/blog/los%20angeles.jpg/image_mini)
A choice bit from the column:
“[T]he people behind Fiji Water readily acknowledge that water is only part of what they offer consumers. They're also selling a perception.”
That must explain the mark up.
Read the rest of the series:
- How water bottlers tap into all sorts of sources – 01/19/2007
- Spin the (water) bottle –– With $11 billion in U.S. sales, the beverage's marketers have become clear winners – 01/17/2007
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