In my last posting, I wrote about recycling efforts in our community (“vanua”) in Fiji. Now Molly, our Culture and Community Affairs Coordinator, will share more about her experiences in the local villages. Take it away, Molly…

Ni Bula Vinaka to everyone from sunny Fiji – sunny now that cyclone season is over, that is. Before I started my work here at FIJI Water, I was based in rural Fijian communities for two years as a U.S. Peace Corps Environmental Volunteer, so I have some experience in Fijian waste management. Given that, I”m really thrilled with the progress we”ve made in a short time with these fairly simple initiatives. Read the rest of this entry »

First things first: What is a “vanua”?

“Vanua” is the Fijian word for “community.” There are six villages that comprise the vanua in the region from which FIJI Water comes: Drauniivi, Togovere, Rabulu, Naseyani, Nananu, and the small settlement of Navunitivi.

As we too are part of the vanua, we work with the community in several ways in addition to our role as an employer, e.g., building and sponsoring schools, developing water access infrastructure, supporting local health clinics and more. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m feeling inspired after spending last week in Fiji. Fiji, of course, is so beautiful that it’s always inspiring. On top of this, the team at the bottling facility is doing some fantastic work to reduce our carbon footprint and improve recycling rates in our local community. They encouraged me tremendously, so I’d like to share some of their stories with you over the next few postings.

Let’s start with recycling at the bottling facility. Paul, our Director of Production Operations & Engineering, has been hard at work over the past year and a half figuring out how to recycle manufacturing waste materials. Thanks to his efforts and those of our recycling partners in Australia, we’ve reduced by 70% the amount of manufacturing waste taken to landfills. Paul’s ultimate goal is for the FIJI Water plant to become a “zero waste” facility, meaning we will reduce, reuse, or recycle all waste. Read the rest of this entry »

We here at FIJI Water hear a lot of complaints about “food miles,” ours in particular. The concept is that the longer your food travels, the worse it is for the environment.

We think this is a load of hooey…and so do scientists who have studied lifecycle carbon footprints. The key word here is lifecycle – how a product is developed or packaged, what the transport mode is, and other factors can have a far greater impact for better or worse than the mere distance traveled. Read the rest of this entry »

ELLE Magazine has recognized FIJI Water in its annual green issue with an ELLE 2008 Green Award! We were hailed – alongside other recipients like Brad Pitt, the Energy Action Coalition and Paul and Stella McCartney – as one of the “people, products and concepts that put energy, and our planet, in the right place.” They highlighted the fact that FIJI Water is “carbon negative – not neutral – this year,” and spoke about our commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the bottling and shipping process, to preserve the Fijian rainforest, and to minimize packaging.

Take a look at what the other award winners are doing too. It’s so inspiring!

Our Senior VP Sustainable Growth, Thomas Mooney, recently spoke with Sustainable Life Media. In this interview, Thomas explains how we’re planning to fulfill the FIJI Green promise and answers the criticism that “bottled water” and “sustainable” don”t belong in the same sentence. You can read the interview here or listen here.

Last November, FIJI Water promised to reduce its carbon footprint by 25% by 2010. In the past few months, we”ve taken a number of steps toward that goal:

• We”ve started producing the 1.5 L product with an initial 7% reduction in packaging.
• We”ve reduced by 70% the amount of manufacturing waste materials taken to landfills.
• We”re using more fuel-efficient trucks in Fiji to transport the product from plant to port, resulting in a 50% reduction in fuel usage.
• By optimizing our logistics, we”ve reduced trucking miles from warehouses to distributors by 26% on average.

These changes reflect a lot of hard work and initiative on the part of many people throughout the company, especially our operations and logistics teams. We look forward to sharing more good news like this over the coming months.

Today we announced our carbon footprint and reported on our progress to date toward fulfilling the promise of FIJI Green. We”re thinking of this as FIJI Green”s first “annual report,” even though it”s all online and not a big book. (And we”ll update you more than once a year – that”s what this blog is for!)

Why does this matter? Read the rest of this entry »

Hi everyone, welcome to our blog! We’re excited about starting this up and look forward to sharing with you the latest news on FIJI Green, our path to sustainability. We’ll talk about our day-to-day wins and struggles, neat stuff we’re learning along the way, and opportunities for you to get involved.

And we want to hear from you! Please share your thoughts on FIJI Green, what we’re doing, what we have planned, all of it. Feel free to ask questions too – we know topics like carbon footprints and climate change can get pretty complicated, and we’ll do our best to make them a bit easier to understand.