environment
May 13, 2008
Join the Movement
We need dedicated and talented fellowship applicants. We provide grassroots advocacy training, a chance to work with an incredible team of leaders, and a blueprint for environmental victory.
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May 13, 2008
We need dedicated and talented fellowship applicants. We provide grassroots advocacy training, a chance to work with an incredible team of leaders, and a blueprint for environmental victory. Can you imagine you or someone you know leading the way on one of the most important environmental and human rights issues of our time? Food & Water Watch's Take Back the Tap Campaign is building upon a groundswell of activism to address the global water crisis. It's growing fast and it needs leaders like you! The Take Back the Tap Campaign is hiring right now for Organizing Fellowships for our Summer Session, June 3 through August 15, and the Fall Session, September 1 through December 15. Fellows will come to Washington for an intensive training in media and messaging; volunteer recruitment and management; coalition-building; campaign strategy; and more. Then, they'll go make it all happen in cities and towns across the country. What fellows will get is a blueprint for changing communities and awakening water consciousness on campuses and beyond. They will help to win real victories to address the global water crisis. Plus we've got $1,000 stipend and college credit is available. The deadline to apply for the summer session is May 15! To apply, send your resume and cover letter to aweinberg(a)fwwatchdotorg; or fax to: 202-683-2501. To contact by phone, please call- 202-683-2483. Watch my YouTube video of the job description - and please -- tell others. Annie Weinberg |
May 2, 2008
Greenwashed: Fiji Water Bottles the Myth of Sustainability
Corporate attempts to label their products as “green” for the sake of turning a fast buck are nothing new. Corporations exist, after all, in order to make money, and capitalizing on whatever is capturing the public’s collective imagination is often the best way of doing so. But Fiji Artisanal Water’s entree into the green movement strikes us as particularly suspect.
Corporate attempts to label their products as “green” for the sake of turning a fast buck are nothing new. Corporations exist, after all, in order to make money, and capitalizing on whatever is capturing the public’s collective imagination is often the best way of doing so. But Fiji Artisanal Water’s entree into the green movement strikes us as particularly suspect.
The company has recently launched fijigreen.com, a website outlining the ways in which their water is “good for the environment.”
If you’re anything like us, you are probably wondering how this claim could be true.
It can’t.
While Fiji’s Artisanal Water’s commitment to reducing their packaging, investing in rainforest renewal and reducing their carbon emissions may be applauded by some, these measures are not enough to make them a green company. By definition, bottled water is simply not an environmentally friendly product.
When companies package and sell water, they take a natural resource that falls freely from the sky from communities that need it, stick it in plastic bottles (made from oil, of course), and ship it across the globe to sell it for hundreds, sometimes thousands of times its actual value. And while Fiji and its cohorts can encourage consumers to recycle, the fact of the matter is that 86% of empty plastic water bottles in the United States end up in the trash, instead of being recycled.
With citizens and governments around the world abuzz with worries of oil shortages, how can companies continue to manufacture a needless product that directly contributes to this impending crisis, let alone have the audacity to proclaim it “green?”
The most sustainable water option isn’t actually green at all (if it were, that would be a bit scary). It’s actually quite clear: tap water. It’s convenient, delivered through energy-efficient means, and in most cases, is just as healthy and pure as its froufy bottled counterparts--sometimes cleaner. Even better, it requires spending very little green in order to do something green.
For more on why tap water is a better alternative to bottled, check out our resources at www.takebackthetap.org. Then tell us how you feel about Fiji Artisanal Water’s not-so-green marketing machine.
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