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.

It”s pretty exciting to be on the cutting edge of recycling here in Fiji, because for the most part, we”re working with a blank slate. Most rural families naturally practice reducing and reusing as a money-saving devices, craftily turning one person”s trash into another”s treasure. Gunny sacks and fabric scraps are sewn into throw rugs, tires are made into swings and planters, and glass and plastic bottles become handy containers.

When it comes time to disposal however, our work in the vanua has the potential to change the way our communities think about their recyclables. Just last weekend I participated in our local women”s netball club weekly tournament, as part of the FIJI Water employee team.

Cartons of FIJI Water were everywhere, and bottles were swigged greedily as we played under the hot equatorial sun. It was music to my ears, however, to hear throughout the day small children, mothers, and the other members of the team saying to each other “Recycle please, everybody.” “Don”t forget to save the bottles!” “Bring that bottle back over here, we can recycle it.” They said it in Fijian, of course, so forgive the rough translations, but I was elated to find that the message is catching on, and that I am no longer the lonely broken record.

Meanwhile at the plant, employees are regularly coming up to me at my desk to boast about all the bottles they return in a week. You”d think I was giving out gold stars! Recycling updates are part of our weekly staff meeting, and departments are lined up against one another and challenged to improve their participation in the program.

We also had a visit last week from the Vatukaloko Jr. Secondary School as they ran the round-the-island torch up to the factory as a prelude to the nationwide secondary school athletics meet in Suva. They ran in the uniforms they had earned through a month-long recycling drive held at the school, and as they prepare to compete, they can have pride knowing that FIJI Water is 100% behind them.

It can be a challenge to establish new habits for a people who, even just 100 years ago, were using all natural, biodegradable materials for all of their everyday needs. Snacks which were once wrapped in banana leaves that could be recklessly discarded, now come in plastic wrappers and tins. The best tool we have is education, and to call upon people who live in a tiny corner of the planet to think of the larger picture. Bottle by bottle, we are doing our part to make Fiji a cleaner, greener place.

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.

On the environmental front, this work includes recycling education and sponsorship. Our efforts have included:

• Providing a free case of product to FIJI Water employees at the bottling facility in return for every case”s worth of bottles they bring in, along with the usual weekly provision of one free case per employee.
• Conducting a recycling drive at the secondary school in Drauniivi. Students brought in aluminum cans, FIJI Water bottles, and other PET bottles to raise money for their school track uniforms. We’re looking at extending similar efforts on an ongoing basis, to encourage a habit of recycling and benefit local schools.
• Sponsoring the eight local women”s netball clubs in a clean up drive, and in return providing new balls for the clubs and trophies for their annual awards ceremony.
• Planning to situate outdoors recycling stations at the plant, local villages, and nearby towns, to serve as collection centers for recyclables.

Molly, our Culture and Community Affairs Coordinator, has been one of the driving forces behind these efforts and many other ways in which we serve the community. In our next blog posting, she’ll share more about recycling education efforts in Fiji.

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.

At first Paul started with plastic and cardboard, for which there are many eager buyers already. Not content with that, however, Paul and the team persisted and found buyers for lab coats, shoe covers, hair nets, pallet strapping, bulk bags and drums, empty spools, and more. (Who knew you could recycle this kind of stuff too?)

When looking for buyers to take the recyclables, Paul simply asks that they pay enough to cover the cost of transportation. With popular materials like PET, however, he can usually get more. So he’s taken the money earned and reinvested it into the recycling infrastructure at the plant. This helps us recycle more materials and do so more efficiently. The bottling facility is now capable of recycling not only its own waste, but also recyclable materials brought in by local residents from their villages and towns. This is important because there is no other recycling infrastructure available to the local community.

In case you are wondering whether the greenhouse gas emissions from transporting recyclable materials to buyers are worth the effort to recycle, here are the numbers from our base year.

• Emissions created by transporting recyclables: 13 tonnes CO2eq
• Emissions avoided by recycling materials instead of producing new ones: 619 tonnes CO2eq

The net impact is an emissions reduction of 606 tonnes CO2eq, having the same effect as taking 111 passenger vehicles off the road for a year or planting over 15,000 trees.

This works on an individual level too. Every time you recycle the packaging for anything you use – food and beverage, for example – you reduce its carbon footprint. Play our recycling game to learn how this works!

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.