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But, of course, none of that would have happened if the press didn’t start the drumbeat first. Newspapers, magazines and broadcast personalities have been questioning the rationality of paying a premium for water that’s been shipped half-way around the world when the same stuff – or something very similar to it – flows from every faucet in America at for pennies per gallon. National Public Radio’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook dedicated half an hour to the practicality of bottled water in July. Marie Claire ran a story in September that concluded that bottled water is bad for the environment, and Time published an article in August that agreed, adding that “Worst of all, the migration to bottled water fosters a perception that tap water isn’t safe or necessary. That’s dangerous at a time when aging public-water systems need investment, particularly as global warming increases the incidence of drought.”
Amid that atmosphere, you might expect the company that headlines the premium bottled water category to watch their sales sink and their audience shrink, but that’s not the case. Fiji’s volume has actually grown, according to Gerry Martin, vice president of marketing at Massachusetts-based Polar Beverages Inc. Martin said Fiji’s sales numbers crescendoed by 22 percent in 2007. He said the brand also increased its market penetration, and continues to win market share from its competitors.
“They just seem to be doing a lot of the right things,” Martin said.
Currently, Chia said, those “right things” center on improving the company’s already-positive environmental profile.
But Fiji isn’t breaking any new ground by touting environmental responsibility; it has become a popular theme in the beverage industry. Coca-Cola pledged in February to recycle 100 percent of the aluminum used in their packaging. While that pledge didn’t include a time line, the soft-drink giant backed it up with a trailer at the Daytona 500 that educated NASCAR fans about the benefits of recycling. Within Fiji’s own category, Icelandic Glacial garnered the 2007 Best of BevNET award for the bottled water category and a distribution deal from Anheuser-Busch partly on the strength of its carbon-neutral certification.