Successful grantees and foundation staff celebrate by blowing out the candles on the FIJI Water Foundation birthday cake.

FIJI Water Foundation celebrated its second birthday yesterday — two years of assisting in development projects in water, health, and education throughout Fiji. Supporters, friends, partners, and grantees joined to help us celebrate by officially launching our Foundation website and announcing the Foundation”s most recent group of successful grant applicants, one of who Read the rest of this entry »

This is our response to the recent Mother Jones article about our company.

We strongly disagree with the author’s premise that because we are in business in Fiji somehow that legitimizes a military dictatorship. We bought FIJI Water in November 2004, when Fiji was governed by a democratically elected government. We cannot and will not speak for the government, but we will not back down from our commitment to the people, development, and communities of Fiji.

We consider Fiji our home and as such, Read the rest of this entry »

If you follow us on Twitter, you know we were mixing and mingling with San Francisco”s finest at SF Chefs. Food. Wine. on August 6-9. On Thursday evening, FIJI Water co-hosted the Rising Star Chefs Reunion, which brought together Rising Star Chefs and Bar Stars as recognized by the San Francisco Chronicle to sample one-of-a-kind tastes celebrating America”s most competitive food city.

Read the rest of this entry »

FIJI Green Gal: From our amazing event manager, Paul, here’s an update about a very special FIJI Water-sponsored charity event called Gift Bags for Good. Learn more about what happened last night in New York City, and find out how you can still help no matter where you are! Read the rest of this entry »

FIJI Green Gal: Here is Kristin, one of our marketing team members, to share her thoughts on public service. Thanks for joining us, Kristin…

When Barack Obama became president, he asked Americans to rise to the challenge in his call for national service. I truly believe that there is something every American can do to serve their community and their fellow man, and to help those in need. Read the rest of this entry »

FIJI Green Gal: Here’s an update from Fiji courtesy of Molly, our FIJI Water Foundation coordinator…

FIJI Water and its hundreds of employees in Fiji were proud to join Fiji”s Earth Hour celebrations this year. On March 28th from 8.30pm to 9.30pm, the factory in Yaqara shut down bottled water operations and used critical lighting only, as did the logistics, finance, and foundation offices in Lautoka and Suva. We encouraged our employees, friends, and neighbors in the communities around our factory to do the same, supplied water to Earth Hour volunteers in the West, and also assisted in the collection and recycling of those donated bottles.

Elsewhere in Fiji, landmark buildings turned off their lights, restaurants held candlelit dinners with live guitar serenades, and at resorts guests were guided to their rooms by tiki torch.

Participating in this year”s Earth Hour is a part of our ongoing commitment to energy efficiency and the environment. As we work on big projects – cutting emissions across our products’ entire life cycle, promoting local recycling, investing in forest carbon and renewable energy projects- we also remember that there are small things we can all do every day to make a difference on our planet.

For more information about Earth Hour, visit www.earthhour.org and see how you and your community can be a part of next year”s celebration.

Tanya Zuckerbrot included FIJI Water in her article, “A Healthy Eating Plan for President Obama,” on Fox News Health Blog recently. In the article, Zuckerbrot, MS, RD, nutritionist and creator of The F-Factor Diet, offers healthy snacking tips to combat stress, fatigue and hypoglycemia. She notes that FIJI Water is a smart choice for hydration since it contains naturally-occurring electrolytes without any added sugars or calories, and that President Obama can often be found sipping our water. (We saw him enjoying FIJI Water on Election Night, of course!)

Get social with FIJI Water! Add FIJI Water to your Facebook and MySpace pages to stay up to date on the latest events, press and more…

A while back, I wrote in this space about the demise of my microwave and its impact on my eating habits, sleep schedule, and carbon footprint. A big thank you to all of you who wrote in with suggestions – there were so many good ideas, many of which I have since adopted. I’ll update you soon with more details about the recipe ideas, stove reheating tips, appliance and furniture shopping guidance, and more that I received from several readers.

I also appreciate the concern of those who felt skipping dinner would be unhealthy. Believe me, I am the last person in the world to advocate not eating as a way to lose weight. Apart from the obvious health implications, I just love to eat. So even if it were a good idea, I couldn’t ever pull it off!

That said, I do believe there are many food and beverage choices we can make that are healthier for us and for the environment. For example, over the past few years, more people have chosen to drink bottled water. While some environmentalists have expressed concern that these people are replacing tap water with bottled water, beverage sales data show this simply isn’t true. People are replacing sugary packaged beverages – not tap – with bottled water, a much healthier and less carbon-intensive option.

Over the past few years, the increase in bottled water volume has closely mirrored the decline in carbonated soft drinks and sugary fruit drinks. In other words, people are substituting bottled water for other packaged beverages that are less healthy and have a higher environmental impact. Soft drinks and fruit drinks use lots of refrigeration energy, result in agricultural impacts (e.g., energy, pesticides, fertilizers) from growing sugar, corn, and other ingredients, and require manufacturing of flavors, preservatives, and other chemicals. (You’ll recall from the Wall Street Journal article that refrigeration is a major carbon emissions source for beverages that require chilling.) Soft drinks also require extra packaging to hold in the bubbles.

So as people choose bottled water instead of soda or fruit drinks, they not only contribute to the overall greening of the beverage industry, but also do so in a way that is healthier. In fact, the switch to bottled water has eliminated about a trillion calories from the American diet over each of the past couple of years.

Trillions of calories – now that’s a lot of weight. Personally, I think FIJI Water tastes much better than the sugary stuff, so I’ll happily choose that when I’m on the go. And if it helps me cut out a couple hundred empty calories, doesn’t need chilling because it tastes good at room temperature, and avoids the conversion of land to agricultural use and the manufacture of preservatives (who needs those?), so much the better!