January 2009 Archives

If you like to drink fine mineral water, you'll be glad you don't live the UK.  Today a court there heard that expensive bottles of luxury mineral water from 'Blenhem Palace' were filled with spring water from Ralph Searle's farm, 150 miles away in Wales.  Read more.

In a recent entry, I asked questions about why we drink bottled water.  The answers to those questions make up a piece of the puzzle, but its who we are that links them together.  In the US, no single group is responsible for the majority of bottled water sales.  Buying bottled water crosses economic, class, age, gender, and race lines.  Sixty year old grandmothers don't care that Madonna drinks Evian and they're not too busy to fill a glass from the tap, but they're toting bottled water home from the grocery store by the case. 

A while back I discovered a book called 'Culture's Consequences,' which clusters the cultural values of 70 countries into five dimensions - Individualism, Power Distance, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long-term Orientation. 

The dimensions provide insight into national behavior and help us to understand many of the problems we face (or create for ourselves) as countries.  For example, why do we pay $1.50 for a bottle of water when we can get the same amount of clean drinking water from our household tap for a few cents?  Or, why do buy bottled water when we know its impact on our environment, our communities and our scarce water resources?  Culture provides a different perspective for thinking about some of our national problems - not just (bottled) water. 

Thinking about the five dimensions, you can probably make some pretty good guesses about who we are.  Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to write about each dimension and how it might relate to water and sustainability issues in the US. 

Last week I asked the question, how can selling over twenty brands of bottled water be ‘Caring for Our Communities & Our Environment’ in relation to Whole Foods and its core values.  A more interesting question is, why hadn’t I noticed that they sold so much bottled water before now.  

Visit any corporate website these days and you’ll find a section explaining the company’s values.  Mostly its some poorly articulated gibberish that nobody except middle management and job applicants pay attention to.  But for those few companies that communicate them effectively, values define standards which govern the behavior of individuals within the organization. If widely held, values will determine how business is done, how employees are treated, and how customers are perceived. Its no surprise they’re critical to success in the marketplace.   

Whole Foods core values go a step further by speaking directly (and aspirationally) to the consumer, forging a values link.  Unless a major transgression occurs (lets say…a beef recall, anti-trust investigation, actively discouraging union activity, and a CEO with a blogging alter-ego…oh, all in one year), those who believe will commit to the organization and stay loyal, because they’re not just buying food, they’re making a statement about who they are when they shop there.  That's why Whole Foods can sell large amounts of bottled water and have people like me not even notice.

McDonald's and others invented Fast Food 50+ years ago and I did fax art projects about it 30 years ago.

Fast Food that's really, "Think It/Have It."   Say what you will about consumption and waste, this remains a mighty appealing proposition.

Can we re-imagine this lovely bit of thought into action for the second decade of the 21st century?  Water bottle refills on the go anyone?  Think It/Have It/Drink it!

Previously Martin Luther King day has been (for many) another shopping day or the chance to take a well earned rest from work.  But this year, one day before the historic inauguration of Barack Obama, its been transformed into a national day of service. 

Although doing something to serve our communities on Martin Luther King day is a great place to start, we should think about this January 19 (and the inauguration) as the beginning of a new era of service in our country. 

So, with that in mind, here’s some ideas for things you can do on Martin Luther King day and beyond.

1)  Pledge to drink tap water from now on, at tappening, food & water watch or corporate accountability international. 

2)  Dine at a restaurant that’s taken the pledge.  Find them here. 

3)  Own a restaurant? Pledge to eliminate bottled water and serve only tap water.   

4) Own a café, deli, 7-11 or fast food outlet?  Sign up to become a partner and provide clean drinking water to the public at tapitwater.com.   

5)  Attend a rally, or get involved in a water rights group in your community.  Use your professional skills to leverage your input.  Community groups need managers, leaders, lawyers, geologists, cooks, communications people, spokespeople, writers and much more.  

6)  Clear your street or beach of empty bottles.  (Don’t forget to recycle.)  Organize a group to do this regularly in your neighborhood or along your local beach.      

If you want to add ideas to the list, send us a comment. 

The War on Bottled Water

In 1992's The Player, Tim Robbins' character, the consummate Hollywood insider, showed his sophistication at restaurants through his ability to differentiate among various kinds of bottled water.  But today, that same Hollywood macher would never ask for anything but tap.  Read more

When I think of water as a youngster, two memories compete for prominence.  The first is positive.  I can still remember the incredibly tactile experience of drinking water from an outdoor hose.  It seemed limitless and cooling both on the inside and the outside of my body.  Invariably, the water would sheet down my neck and chest while simultaneously filling my mouth.  Nobody cared that I was getting my clothes wet.  That was a great feeling.   

The second is less positive.  In the catholic grade school I attended, the nuns used water as both a reward and a punishment.  If you were ‘good’ you were permitted to take three swallows of water from the water fountain.  If you were ‘bad’ you had to remain in your seat while the ‘good’ kids got to drink. This was on hellishly hot afternoons in a boiler-factory school with the smell of vomit and sawdust from generations kneaded into the wooden floors and liberated by the heat.   

If you were among the chosen, you would let your mouth fill until the water almost spilled out so that your swallow was of the maximum amount of water.  The head nun – Sr. Mary Alma (think Meryl Streep in Doubt) actually looked at your Adam's apple to count the swallows.  Occasionally, the benevolent pastor Fr. Curran would wander by and the counting stopped until he was gone, then it resumed with a passion only Sr. Mary Alma could sustain.

Bruce Nussbaum had a fascinating blog post about the nature of the new post-consumer society and the role of GEN Y’ers.  He notes that Gen Y has little in common with the transactional mantra of Gen X and even older Baby-boomers.  We trade valuable things to create wealth – you give me money for my labor.  In contrast, Gen Y’ers create value through interactions and trusted social networks.  Monetizing ideas that help them do conventional things differently.  

This nicely parallels the modern leader, who is transformational and builds influence through interactions with followers.  This is now the universally accepted theory of leadership both domestically and globally.  It used to be Laissez Faire (I got mine, you worry about yours), then transactional (you give me what I want and I’ll give you what you want); and finally transformational (you and I together can build a social network that is the agent of creation – and ultimately wealth for all). 

In fact, this raises the question of who is the leader?  If the transformation of the GEN Y’ers to interaction-driven behavior is the new engine of growth, it is likely that the modern leader picks up on this to form a “theory” of personal leadership.  So, in a sense, the leader is really the “led.”  Obama was probably transformational early in his professional life (Community Organizer, Politician).  His genius in 2007-2008 was realizing which generation to target with that message.

I recently asked a German friend of mine what he thought about TapIt and his response got me thinking about the differences between Americans and Europeans.  (Although I’m not sure its fair to equate German with European.)  Although he thought TapIt was an ‘ingenious’ idea, he thought perhaps it was something the state should be doing in the form of installing water fountains.   

Now, as Americans, we love all things European, cute walled towns, beautiful cars, wine, rare beers, liberal social mores (particularly as they relate to drugs and prostitution), and single payer health care.  But what we don’t like, is their reliance on the state as the solution to every problem.    

Although lobbying the state to install water fountains is a great idea (and something I support), it doesn’t really expand the individual or create anything new.  Imagine if the creators of Facebook, instead of developing the social networking site, lobbied the federal government to provide new meeting places across America (town halls maybe), so that people could ‘stay in touch with old friends’ and ‘meet new people.’  Or, if they’d asked the federal government to build Facebook and hoped for a job.  Either way, no Facebook!

The reason I love the US is because of the endless possibilities for invention and reinvention, the opportunities that result from its sheer size (geographic and population), and the attitude of doing something for oneself. 

Facebook and sites like it developed and used technology to create new ways of interacting, a new vocabulary, a whole new psychology really, not to mention hundreds of jobs and challenging careers for its creators.  Facebook (and things like it) is what sets us apart.  Facebook is why I love the US!

I saw a great idea in the NY Times recently.  Two Rensselear students have designed a plastic water bottle, that can be re-filled with sand and used as a brick.  It’s shaped so that it interlocks with other bottles of the same make – like lincoln logs. The aim is to use the bottles to build housing in developing countries. 

I lived in Mumbai, India in 2003 and was struck by the amount of bottled water consumed there - and not just by tourists trying to avoid Bombay belly.  The empty bottles littered the roads.  India’s Parle Bisleri was the first player in the bottled water market, but after economic liberalization in the early 90s, the big multi-nationals swept in to take their share.  The waste got worse. 

Mumbai Dreaming

From my apartment, I could see the houses in the slums, built piece by piece with any material that could be salvaged.  I remember seeing women walking down the street carrying just one brick – another one with which to build a home.  So, yes, it strikes me as brilliant.   

Given that around 50% of Mumbai’s population lives in ‘temporary housing’, how quickly would the streets be cleaned up, if much of the litter could be used to build structures?  How much money could be saved by municipal governments who clean the streets?  How many more entreprenuers would exist if the ‘bricks’ could be traded? 

Of course, it doesn’t address the water side of the equation.  And I have my concerns about how much of the beautiful Juhu Beach would be left if half the population were filling ‘bricks’ with sand.  But those are questions for another day.

I was in Whole Foods the other day stocking up for the coming week.  I was making the rounds, grabbing the usual, (see stuffwhitepeoplelike #48 for my shopping habits), when I wandered into the beverage aisle.  I stopped, what the F*%!  On one side of the aisle, fruit juice, organic white tea, but on the other side at least twenty different brands of bottled water.  And then, end caps full of bottled water and around the corner, a phalanx of bottled water up against a wall for bulk purchase.

I had to admit, I hadn’t really noticed it before.  But then I recalled reading that bottled water is the best selling item at Whole Foods period, in Elizabeth Royte’s book Bottlemania. 

Now, I appreciate the need to turn a profit, but I began to wonder why Whole Foods would choose to fill its shelves with a product so clearly at odds with its core values.  How is twenty brands of bottled water ‘Caring for our Communities & our Environment?’

I’m old enough to remember when Madonna fellated that bottle of Evian in Truth or Dare.  I don’t know what it did for Evian’s sales, but I wonder about the impact on us of celebrities photographed toting bottled water.  What effect does access to water have on sales?  It’s not that easy to get a glass of water when you’re walking down West Broadway these days and public water fountains have all but disappeared (although you probably didn’t notice).  But what if they did exist, have we become to lazy too fill a bottle from a tap?  Or maybe too freaked out by ‘germs.’  Does bottled water speak to economic status in the age of Aquafina and Dasani – those cleaned up waters for the masses?  Do they really taste better than tap water?  What is the effect of beverage industry marketing?  All those green labels and clear mountain streams.  And when did we become so obsessed with hydration anyway?