A few months ago, I saw a gentleman at an outdoor function who was standing alone and decided to pick up a conversation. Turns out he was the U.S. Brand Manager for Aquafina, the bottled water division of Pepsi. Being that this was a conference about sustainability, he mentioned his feeling of not particularly wanting to be noticed and chastised. I understood his plight but had to laugh a little. After all, this is a touchy subject nowadays with everyone having their own story.
Our discussion came down to the following agreed upon points:
- Bottled water is convenient and great, but it does need to consumed responsibly. While it is better than soda, drinking it in large numbers is bad for the environment because of the large volume of plastic being produced, often not being recycled at end-of-life.
- Imported bottled water is now completely unsustainable. It doesn’t matter if Fiji, Evian, or other companies use carbon offsets or not.
- Private label bottlers and retail incentives like free cases with $20 purchases, or selling it at a loss to drive additional cross-category sales, is what’s driving a large portion of the problem.
- Larger bottles like one liter, are better than smaller ones because the value is better and the likelihood of being shared and reused is greater.
What do YOU think?
UPDATE 4/5/09 - Aquafina using 50% less plastic in bottles and launches Eco-Fina Campaign
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
tap water. I prefer to pay for my water once.
It’s an interesting business problem for the category leaders but I really like where Brita has gone. For $7 you can buy a Nalgene bottle with some Crystal Light packets inside as part of their filterforgood.com program.
I was drinking a case of water ($4) and two 2.5 gallon jugs of water ($6) every two weeks because my tap water tastes terrible. The Brita pitcher and the Nalgene bottle cost just under $40. So over time it makes economic and environmental sense - and I don’t have a lug home 10 lbs worth of water every time I shop.