The debate over global warming may well continue for many years. Whatever the consequences of our spewing pollutants into the atmosphere day by day one thing seems certain - sources of fresh, potable water are becoming scarce. In the western states of the USA rivers are running dry, reservoir levels are shrinking and wildfires, sparked by heat-burdened, tinder-dry woodlands are burning by the dozen and it’s only June.

The states of the USA will have to learn to share; asking people to use less water will not work - look at the oil situation and American’s unwillingness to cut back on driving. Beyond our borders, countries that do not have a plentiful and easily accessible source of water will soon look to their neighbors or nearby countries that have a plentiful supply of what is becoming known as ‘blue gold.’ There will be envy.

T. Boone Pickens

When an oil man becomes a water baron we should all take note. In an article in Business Week Susan Berfield tells us - “If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property.” He makes no bones about his ambition to sell water - “There are people who will buy the water when they need it. And the people who have the water want to sell it. That’s the blood, guts, and feathers of the thing,” Pickens says.

Meanwhile Americans spent nearly $11 billion on bottled water in 2006, when we could have guzzled tap water at up to about one ten-thousandth the cost. That fact comes from a book by Elizabeth Royte called Bottlemania - How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. She also tells the tale of how the residents of Fryeburg, Me, are trying to stop Nestlé’s Poland Spring from sucking 168 million gallons of water a year from its pristine aquifer. All of which goes into plastic bottles.

Something has to change as, just like oil, there soon will not be enough to water to go around. And those eight glasses a day that some “experts” say we should drink? Not true. As more clearheaded experts point out, drink when you’re thirsty. Soon you may not have that choice.

Related Post: Fiji Water: A green product?

If you are firmly committed to using only truly green products and if you care deeply about a company’s carbon footprint it would be hard to have much sympathy for Fiji Water. Without digging too deep online I found many articles that have assessed the cost and energy that is required to bottle Fiji Water and transport it to the USA. For instance, Ask Pablo at the Triple Pundit website calculated that “a bottle that holds 1 liter (of Fiji Water) requires 5 liters of water in its manufacturing process (this includes power plant cooling water).” And to deliver one bottle of Fiji Water to the USA consumes “81g of fossil fuels, 720g of water, and 153g of GHGs per bottle delivered to the US from Fiji.” Clearly this is not good news for a product that promotes distance and exoticism as its marketing advantages.

To counter this criticism the company has embraced openness and has a blog, the Fiji Green Blog. While this is a welcome move it also puts the company in to an awkward position. Their willingness to accept open comments on their site is commendable - check out the critical comments posted on the blog by the public. I have to take issue with the blog’s title though - Fiji Green. The company’s main web site is also titled Fiji Green. The use of the word ‘green’ suggests the influence of a marketer here and there is a danger in labeling a product ‘green’ when it is clearly not - the public is suspicous.

Media Post reports “According to an Ipsos Reid study conducted this spring on behalf of Icynene, seven in ten Americans either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ agree that when companies call a product “green” (meaning better for the environment), it is usually just a “marketing tactic”. Consumers appear to be wary of companies who label their products as being green, or environmentally friendly, acknowledges the report. In the US, 75% of the men believe that labeling a product green is just a marketing tactic, compared to 65% of the women.” And AdAge.com reports that although consumers “have better-than-average recall when it comes to remembering green advertising. The bad news: They aren’t buying into the claims.”

Fuji Water then is between a rock and a hard place - it needs to rethink how it markets its product to green consumers. The only bottled water that’s truly ‘green’ is the water you pour into a recycled container at home yourself from the kitchen sink. That action doesn’t conjure up visions of tropical jungles and faraway destinations but it will help reduce the environmental impact of shipping bottled water halfway around the earth.

Back in 1992 the US Government released a pdf of how to discern if a product that is marketed as ‘green’ is truly ‘green’ and made from recyclable material. And Earth Day is April 22nd.

Update April 18th 08: Bottle Maker to Stop Using Plastic Linked to Health Concerns, Canada Likely to Label Plastic Ingredient ‘Toxic’