Cause Marketing

The Times they are A-Changing The bottled water industry generated $15 billion in revenue in America in 2006. It will top $16 billion this year. That’s more than Americans spent on movie tickets or iPods. And while 50 percent of Fijians don’t have access to clean, reliable water, millions of gallons Fiji Water is shipped most of the way across the Pacific and then trucked from the coast to chi-chi hotels or otherwise sold at a premium across the country. This even though almost every American could walk to the closest tap and draw out clean, safe and often good-tasting water. These and other choice facts come out in Charles Fishman’s well-wrought 6,000-word piece on water in the July Fast Company . At a time when the bottle watered business has never been better, I predict that the only direction it can go from here is down. The times they are a-changing. Fishman concludes: Packing bottled water in lunch boxes, grabbing a half-liter from the fridge as we dash out the door, piling up ha...