Comments on: Clicklist: L.A. River cleanup sponsored by bottled water company

By: Siel

Siel — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:23:21 +0000

mel brings up a good point — Where did the $50K go? Was the sponsorship money intended to go not just to the event but back into FoLAR’s general fund? I’m not against that — I’m just wondering if that’s what the deal was.

M — Did the invite to the cleanup at least encourage people to bring their own? I’m sort of getting the sense that we need more non-bottled water sponsorships — i.e. from people who do filtered tap water for conferences and the like….

joe — I agree with you to an extent, but what I’m pointing out here is that there’s no critique going on either on the part of FoLAR or LAT. Could accepting sponsorships from bottled water companies make nonprofits less likely to speak out against them? Or are they really able to bite the hand that feeds them — instead of just cleaning up after said hand’s litter after the fact?

Of course I run ads and accept sponsorships here too, some from corporations — so I’m not claiming to be pure of those influences. I do admit, however, that they ARE influences, as much as I’d like to think I try to remain uninfluenced.

By: fiji-water

fiji-water — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:49:41 +0000

As President of FIJI Water, I encourage readers to read our response to the article, which we have posted on our blog: http://blog.fijigreen.com/2009/08/fiji-water-responds-to-mother-jones-article/ I also encourage readers to post any questions they might have on our blog, where all reasonable queries will be responded to by employee representatives.

We strongly disagree with the author’s premise that because we are in business in Fiji that somehow legitimizes a military dictatorship. We bought FIJI Water in November 2004, when Fiji was governed by a democratically elected government. FIJI Water does not nor will ever actively support the government of the day. The government does not speak for us and we cannot and will not speak for the government. What we can do is try to help the socio-economic development of Fiji as much as we can by running a world-class company that provides much-needed jobs, health care, education, and clean drinking water to the people who live in the villages surrounding our company and the greater community of Fiji.

John Cochran
President, FIJI Water

By: joe linton

joe linton — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:49:52 +0000

There’s no question in my mind that water in plastic bottles is not good for the environment and even “the greatest advertising and marketing trick of all time” (quote from the excellent documentary ‘Tapped’)

Personally, I think it’s ok for non-profits to accept donations from folks like this, to find common ground with them where possible, but not to become timid in critiquing them when appropriate. It’s a balancing act.

By: mel

mel — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:09:03 +0000

Anything for a buck in these tough times, I guess. But given the profit margin for FoLAR on the event, they easily could have given away a sigg bottle (w/logo) to each participant. Might have been a more responsible action and helped to offset the hideous soul-killing irony of the deal.

By: M

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:50:05 +0000

I participated in the LA River clean up this past weekend and was actually interviewed by the LA Times reported (and only part of my statement ended up in the LA Times). When he asked what was in my trash bag, I dug around and told him “plastic” in the form of bags, wrappers, straws and other stuff and then mentioned that if companies saw all of this waste and were made responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products, maybe they wouldn’t choose that sort of packaing. So the fact that that connection wasn’t mentioned in the article wasn’t for lack of someone saying it. Honestly though, at least the majority of the plastic we picked up was not from water bottles and other drink bottles.

Another funny thing is that there wasn’t any water available to participants by the end of the clean-up despite sponsorship by a water company! My boyfriend and I only had 1 single bottle of water between the two of us during the whole event. I did contact FoLAR though and they understood the compromises made by allowing support of an event to come from such a company. Based on the water sources they offered at previous clean-ups, the choice to have single serve bottles of water doesn’t sound like it was their favorite way of handling the situation.