The word for the day is “greenwashing.” Coined in the 1980s to describe the fusing between green branding and whitewashing as regards those little cards in hotel rooms encouraging you to hang up your towels to re-use them, it’s now so ingrained as to be maudlin even to mention. Of course Exxon wants to be green. 
Even British Petroleum is now Beyond the black stuff (see? it’s in their name, so no need to worry about that). That’s how we get elephants dancing in the rainforest to celebrate GE’s (gag) ecomagination; also, Exhibit B, this abomination from Shell, freshly censured by the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency.
The rationale for this puffery should be obvious: corporations need money, many of their activities create externalities (pollution, global warming, poverty, deforestation, childhood cancer, etc.), and it’s cheaper in general to greenwash than it is to clean up whatever mess is being made or increase prices and risk alienating consumers and/or losing your ability to compete.
Meanwhile, we want to consume things that we probably shouldn’t. Like bottled water. Lots of it. Consider the absurdity of this spectacle – can it really be true that Americans, with some of the cleanest and safest tap water in the world, will pay up to 10,000 times as much for bottled water? Yes. Not only that, but they’ll fly this water in from thousands of miles away, creating millions of tons of carbon emissions. They’ll also tote a big bottle to little Bobby’s soccer practice, even though a 1999 NRDC test showed Bobby’s odds of drinking chemical or bacteria contaminants including arsenic, toluene, xylene, phthalates, adipate, or styrene are about one in three if you choose bottled over tap water. And the odds are that that bottle won’t be recycled (like less than 5% of the 40 billion pounds of plastic that’s produced every year), so it’ll end up in a landfill, adding to the 25% of waste shipped to landfills (or the Sub-Pacific Tropical Gyre) that is plastic. All of this in a world where one-sixth of the population does not have access to safe drinking water and where between 2 and 7 billion are expected to face water scarcity by the middle of the century.
Enter water mega-retailer Fiji, claiming to solve the problems they (and their customers, and distributors) are creating by shipping aquifer water thousands of miles around the world to be toted in chic square bottles nestled in expensive handbags. That’s right. Just in time for Earth Day, Fiji Water announced they’re going “carbon-negative.” They’ve even got a new website, fijigreen.com, for all your bottled-water-consumption-rationalization needs.
Here’s the skinny on their new plan. Fiji’s going to hook up its bottling plant to a wind farm by 2009, ship their East Coast products to Philly rather than trucking them from LA (!), using biodiesel and “alternative fuels” in their trucks and in the plant when becalmed, decreasing the amount of plastic and paper used in bottles and cartons. In addition, the Fiji Foundation (their tax shelter, presumably) is going to give money to preserve the Yaqara Valley (conveniently, where their water source is) and the Sovi Basin, a Fijian-owned low-lying rainforest.
If you have any questions about this, the company’s conveniently set up a “blog” where they propagandize share information about their process of “going green.” On this blog you’ll find testimonies from super-crappy singer/songwriter Ben Jelen, whose insights include this gem:
“To understand, I imagined a world without Fiji water, where their company had not existed. In this world, there was no effort to replant old rainforest. In this world there was no profit set aside to offset carbon emissions — no money put into offset programs that plant trees and build infrastructure for clean energy…”
Yes, that’s right, Ben. Without Fiji’s extraction of water and shipping it to needy Culver City restaurant-goers, there would be no efforts to replant old rainforest. And heaven forfend, no carbon “offsets,” which are of dubious effectiveness (in that they may contribute to warming either actively or by functioning as an outlet for everyone’s need for symbolic action). So, happy day! There’s no need to change our lifestyles! No need to drink the effing TAP WATER and leave the aquifer water in the ground for future generations or, god forbid, the heritage of the people of Fiji, still suffering under a nasty government that kindly granted a 99-year lease on the aquifer to Fiji Water LLC, a subsidiary of Roll International Corporation.
It’s clear, from reading about Canadian water magnate David Gilmour, that his heart’s in the right place. If by “right place” you mean flying in a private jet with Fran Drescher to luxuriate on a private island for $1400 a night. I’m sure this tradition of social responsibility will continue with Roll International and on until the company’s eventually bought by Nestlé.
We’re way beyond greenwashing here. The Fiji saga signals an epic PR battle for the hearts, minds, and wallets of the planet. The trick here is a false dilemma, which Ben nicely demonstrates in his “without Fiji” formulation. There’s no doubt that it’s a good idea to help out poor Fijians. Also good to have rainforests. But the idea that buying this product is what makes this happen is the dangerous bit. Especially when the way its carbon-neutrality is achieved is by, basically, paying out to the majority world to do our dirty work for us, keeping the atmosphere clean and stuff, while we luxuriate in that super-soft-silicate mouth feel.
Read More
Turns out there are a number of good new resources for the greenwash-adverse online. For more information, check these out:
- Greenpeace’s Stop Greenwashing site: http://www.stopgreenwash.org/
- Enviromedia’s Greenwashing Index: http://www.greenwashingindex.com/
- Greenpeace’s Book of Greenwashing: http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/5/59/GP_Book_of_Greenwash.pdf
- The Political Economics of Greenwashing. Stan Cox, Counterpunch
- The Unsuitablog
- The Pacific Institute on Bottled Water: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/bottled_water/index.htm
- Not about greenwashing, but a cool site I’m sure I’m the last person on the Internets to learn about: http://www.askpablo.org/
good post. it used to be that being “green” meant consuming less, the trick now is getting people to believe it’s ok to consume as long as it’s the right product. i think kermit the frog was right.
looks like you did about half the research, and then stopped. what happened?
1. david no longer owns fiji. hasn’t for years. he is in no way affilated with Roll, who he sold the company to YEARS ago.
2. fiji water is one of Fiji’s TOP exports, without it, they couldn’t even be a part of the global economy. prior to that, sugar was their #1 export, and we all know sugar has bottomed out.
3. this company really does care about it’s home (Fiji) and its local operation is run almost entirely by native fijians.
4. ben encourages young folks to think, long and hard-and then act. he has been so amazing at encouraging young people (like me) to take a part in a more socially conscious world.
5. what about voss, evian, or even worse….IMPORTED FOODS. oh. my. gosh. if we think about it…LOTS of the things we consume are shipped from all over. wonder if they are as proactive in improving our environment? well, i suppose the answer lies in the fact that fiji was the FIRST company to go carbon negative AND the FIRST private company to disclose their carbon footprint.
i understand you being upset, and i hear the term “greenwash” a lot, now, but you are WAY off base. when will we actually applaud the few corporations that are being PROACTIVE in this situation, and call the others on the carpet.
i hope all your posts aren’t this ill-informed…or i’ve been wasting my time on here…
Hi Anne,
Thanks for visiting Toxic Culture. I hope that more PR flacks join us for what promises to be a spirited conversation about the wide world of oxymorons like “corporate responsibility” and “green consumption.” Perhaps Ben himself will join us. I support his work with the NRDC, think his argument for eating meat (”I just do,” basically) is pitifully weak, and look forward to hearing his defense (or your defense, or anyone’s defense) of the carbon offset industry.
To re-iterate: I’m basically making four arguments in my original post. 1. It’s socially irresponsible to drink bottled water because it’s bad for the environment. Therefore, 2. People should drink tap water. Meanwhile, 3. Carbon offsets don’t work, and may cause global warming while at the same time reinforcing the racist global economy (we rich people will continue to consume while paying you poor people to plant trees to absorb our emissions … it’s win-win!). And finally, 4. We should beware of false dilemmas, as illustrated in the “blog” post I excerpted.
You point out that “David” doesn’t own Fiji anymore. Yes. That is both correct and noted in my post, which goes so far as to link to Roll’s non-existent website. Shame they don’t seem to have a greenwashing strategy yet for their other holdings, including super-evil Teleflora, which will be flying flowers sourced in poisonous Kenyan sweatshops and appalling Columbian greenhouses direct to the tables of mothers all over the US this very weekend.
Next you say that Fiji Water is an important export for Fiji. That may be true. It is also true that the Nile Perch is an important export for Tanzania. This doesn’t mean that it is a good idea. Sugar plantations weren’t a good idea in Fiji either – colonization takes many forms, and is harder to resist when it seems to have a friendly face. The idea that it’s water or sugar for Fiji is just another example of the false dilemma I’ve criticized earlier.
You say that “Without it, they couldn’t even be a part of the global economy.” That is obviously false. Fiji water is not what is enabling the nation of Fiji to participate in the global economy. And, if that’s your argument, that’s a terrible thing for the economy to be built on, as the aquifer is going to run out at some point in this century, presumably setting the Fijians up for a big fall. But I suppose the gentle folks at Roll will stay on to help the needy Fijians long after the water’s run out.
I also want to note that the racist global economy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially if you’re working in some Nike sweatshop, grotesque maquiladora, or Pakistani soccer ball factory. “Part of the global economy” isn’t a status that has generally been great for all but the very elite in the majority world, and things like carbon offsets, which you are defending, exacerbate rather than alleviate these problems.
Now, I’m not saying that the factory is a sweatshop. In fact, you make the argument that Fiji Water “really does care about it’s [sic] home (Fiji) and its local operation is run almost entirely by native fijians.” That’s super. It is also entirely irrelevant to my argument, which was that people should drink tap water.
Which is not imported. Unlike all the foods that you say are imported. It’s even worse than you think – in my post earlier this week about food prices, I pointed out that the average meal travels 1,500 miles to get to your plate in the United States. This is pretty much the definition of unsustainable, and even if carbon offsets work (which they don’t, except if by “work” you mean “paper over serious problems in our consumption patterns that may lead to global extinction”), it’s unlikely that we can plant enough doomed mango trees to continue this farce of a global diet we’ve got going on.
So, here we have a textbook case of the false dilemma: Fiji Water! It’s better than these other companies! Quite an advertising strategy. Maybe even a trend:
Monsanto! Because we’re totally not dumping this into your drinking water!
Union Carbide! That cloud has totally subsided!
Look, we welcome your comments. I’m happy (delighted, even), to debate this issue with you or anyone else. But if you’re going to call my post “ill-informed,” may I suggest that next time you bring some evidence to the table?
Kate
Perfectly good drinking water is used in our toilets as well.
[...] For a blog that makes its stand clear: Don’t drink Fiji Water [...]
[...] may remember that we’re deeply skeptical of the carbon offset industry. That was one of our major objections to Fiji Water’s corporate reinvention (”Look! We’re green! Continue to pay through [...]
just like the fat-free craze. remember? eat as many cookies as you want. they’re fat-free.
consume as much as you want. it’s good for the planet!
it’s amazing how with the right pr spin, people will believe anything.