Fiji Water
 

Here is an interesting back story to Fiji Water.
We've all seen its product placements and probably have read about its ownership.
I learned a couple of things from this article and figure it might be of interest.

IMO an unlikely, but good news story. ;)

(I'm not normally a buyer of bottled water, but I have some of this at home (a special offer a while back) and love the bottle design. :p)

When I buy boutique bottled water (which is not too often) I do enjoy Fiji after Vittel, Volvic, and Voss. I also wonder how the rain water penetrates impermeable rock as per the back label of Fiji water bottles.....;)

What is the deal with Fiji water - I know it is outrageously expensive - what is so special about it? Is it regular water, or some kind of mineral water?

I believe its just naturally filtered water drawn from an artesian aquifer. I tasted it once and didn't think it was anything special.

Bottled water in general is environmentally horrible, as water is pretty heavy, and a lot of fossil fuels get burned shipping it hundreds or thousands of miles from source to consumer. So while Fiji water may be worse on this front than domestically produced water, it's pretty bad for even the local companies to be playing the environmental card here.

It's not inexpensive but when they offer 40% off with free shipping it's not outrageously expensive. Plus the Delta miles. :P

Yeah, and I'm sure all these US firms pump their water using gnomes and deliver it using pixie dust powered trucks.

Pathetic that they'd use poor excuses like this to complain about Fiji. It is decent water, and it is marketed brilliantly.

I'd rather spend $3 on a bottle of Fiji Water than $3 on a bottle of <insert fictitious spring name here> city water that has undergone a 20 step treatment in a factory.

I think the Fuji plastic bottle is a really nice design and much more rigid than most others. Best part is many hotels give them out to the frequent travelers for free and the bottle sturdiness permits many refills from the nearest tap.

MisterNice

Fiji water is not as popular within Fiji.

On my recent trip there was another local water with a similar logo and bottle design that was more readily available... although the Hilton did have a few Fiji water bottles in the fridge.

--Russ

Completely agree. I realize that I dont drink enough water. I have to pick up a case of Fiji, the bottles help with behavior modification and will get me to drink more. Silly, whatever..... It will work.

all bottled water tastes the same to me.

for water on a volume basis to cost 7x what gasoline costs is a ridiculous notion

Yeah, it's all in the bottle design. This is confirmed by hotels that favor it for minibars or other pay-per-use arrangements.

I remember it being pretty common and inexpensive in Fiji as well. At least it has that connection going for it.

Iceland has been trying to imitate the feat but hasn't come up with a good enough bottle design for the Iceland water.

I can't tell any difference in taste or quality. Might as well get Dasani, which uses those mysterious additives to make it taste more "watery."

BTW, going for a week on collected rainwater in the Cook Islands helped me better appreciate the "mineral" part of water that comes from the ground.

It is, but I think most of it is packaging and shipping costs. It's sort of analogous to engine oil. I'm not a chemist or petroleum engineer or whatever, but I think the process to refine oil into motor oil isn't much different than that of refining gasoline. Yet a quart of oil on the shelf of Schucks/Kragen/CarQuest/NAPA/whatever is FAR more than a 1/4 of a gallon of gas at the corner gas station. If you could buy oil in bulk (in 55 gallon drums, like auto shops get it), it's probably much cheaper, and if you could justify buying it by the tanker truck load, it's probably just about the same as gas.

With water, small bottles are expensive, but if you go down to your local Culligan man (hey!), you can get the same stuff for a tiny amount. When I was camping in a trailer without running water, I was able to refill my 2-gallon dispenser at Culligan for about a buck and a half, and a 5-gallon bottle was only a little bit more. It tasted exactly the same as the $2 Dasani from the vending machine.

If you do want the convenience of portable bottles and don't want to hassle with refilling from jugs, the best and cheapest I've found is the Kirkland Signature bottled water at Costco. I actually prefer the taste of that to Arrowhead, too.

So why can't we just get an american company to make some pretty bottles for their own water here and save the crazy waste of resources? :p

American companies seem to prefer expensive sounding names over expensive bottles.

Although Coke/Dasani doesn't say what they are, they are in all likelihood simple salts like potassium chloride.

The start making Dasani by purifying tap water. Humans don't think very pure tap water tastes 'right' because they're used to drinking water that contains some level of dissolved salts (try taking a sip of highly distilled water or 'RO' water). So, they add some mineral salts to make the taste 'better'.

It is frankly just a silly product which I believe was dreamed up by a marketing genius and should be highly taxed as an environmental disaster. We act like we are concerned about global warming and yet we waste resources to import a product that adds nothing except to our landfills. I refuse to drink it unless nothing else is available or I am in a third world country. If you have to drink bottled water (and there is very little reason for it, other than in a third world country), one should drink local bottled water.

We are obsessed with drinking water in fancy bottles when people in third world countries are dying from lack of potable water, as “[u]nsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.” We really should be ashamed. Instead of spending money on bottled water, we should make donations to charities like charity: water.

Also, bottled water does not have fluoride which prevents tooth decay. So kids who grow up in wealthy families drinking the stuff will likely spend lots of time in the dentist’s chair when they get older.

Can we send this thread to OMNI or lock it now?

Let it go on record that I agree with Nevsky on all his points but
also with jakuda in that this thread doesn't really belong here.

I love Fiji water, drink it every day... while the other bottled water companies have been going the "eco-friendly" route of making their bottles as thin and light as possible (and thus a pain to re-fill yourself), Fiji has these nice thick, sturdy plastic bottles. I bought a litre bottle of it at the store six months ago, and have been refilling and keeping it in my fridge ever since! Can't say I can tell that it's from the tap, as long as it's ice cold, that's all that matters.

Now refilling is a real win-win.

Responding to the comments above - henever I use a bottle of hotel water, I try to re-use the one bottle, to minimise waste.

Aside from buying a few packs of Fiji once, for the pantry, I don't buy it unless we're out of bottles for the fridge. I now use a Sistema (NZ made) sports water bottle with wetsuit-style insulation while at work.

Have you seen Fiji Water offered at any hotel where you've been a guest?

Cheers,
BB

I have some hilarious pictures of my brother with bottles of Fiji water in Nadi. IIRC, it was around 50 cents US for a liter bottle.

After touring all over Fiji, especially in areas around Nadi and Suva, I don't see how anyone could ever think it is a "pristine ecosystem." The water is a brilliant marketing concept, though.

I fully concede that I'm going OMNI PR with this reply, very much on-topic for this conversation.

Fo those who continue to reuse the botles over a period of months, do you sanitize the bottles...?

Those of you worried about lack of fluoridation in bottled water, do you brush your teeth..?

I fail to see the linkage between consumption of bottled water and lack of safe drinking water elsewhere in the world. There's no tradeoff other than at the level of spending money on something you view as frivolous. Do you take vacations? Buy new rather than used clothing? Use anything other than the cheapest shampoo? There are plenty of things that many people consume in wealthier countries (and that 'elites' in less wealthy countries consume) that could be deemed less important than provision of healthy drinking water.

Still, the presents something of a false choice.

(1) it's precisely economic growth that provides for safe drinking water
(2) systems which support such growth as well as consumption are precisely the systems that provide for healthy drinking water
(3) the barriers to implementation of such systems where healthy drinking water is a luxury are not going to be consumption of bottled water in wealthier societies... the barriers are going to be local institutions and policies.
(4) if you care about safe drinking water you care about governments and polciies in the countries without such. in fact, why are you spending your time on Flyertalk, discussing drinking water, when you could be working for institutional change in countries where poor institutions prevent the development of safe drinking water?

My objection to Fiji water - or drinking Evian in India - is that it is pointless to cart a product thousands of miles when a perfectly acceptable local substitute exists e.g Highland Spring in UK, Himalaya in India.

The same can be said for virtually every product you buy.

In many cases yes. I can tell the difference between a British and Kenyan pea (for example) but bottled water? Not at all.

It is about to become the water of choice at W Hotels.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Online Guest Feedback Coordinator
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

So pedestrian.

I only drink bald eagle tears.

Good point - but to some people, certain brands of water do taste better than any available local flavors.

Dasani/Aqua Fina are unhealthy waters because they will take the minerals out of your body. If you exercise do not drink it. You will rinse the last remaining minerals after you have sweated out the rest out of your body with this purified water. The best is to drink real mineral water. Perrier, Sant Pellegrino or Gerolsteiner are the best.

If I could get Perrier, San Pellegrino, or Gerolsteiner for the 30 cents or whatever I can get a bottle of Kirkland Signature brand bottled water from Costco, I certainly would!

Where is your science to back that up? There are a few studies which I can send links to from Google books, which indicate otherwise regarding mineral loss, including exercise induced anemia for females.

Health risks from drinking demineralized and low mineralized water WHO 2004

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D050; Blazer/4.3) 16;320x448)

Amen..... :D

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D050; Blazer/4.3) 16;320x448)

Bottled Water does taste different.... but most have to do a head to head comparison to figure it out.

They say that in some places drinking the tap water is better for you because the laws on keeping the tap water clean are stricter then the laws on bottled water.

Welcome to Flyertalk!

It depends on the bottled water and the tap water in question. Certainly the tap water where I live now is outstanding. I drink bottled water for convenience. On the other hand, some years ago I lived in Fairfax County Virginia. I think they got their water from the Potomac. Every summer, as the water level would go down and hence the bacterial count would go up, they had to crank up the chlorine to purify the water. It had so much chlorine in it that when we ran the shower the apartment smelled like a swimming pool. Even our cats wouldnt drink the water. We used bottled water for any internal consumption in the summer; coffee, drinking, and water for the cats.

good call.. i'd buy a cool looking american made bottle... even if it would taste exactly the same as all the rest!

But...how are the pipes from the treatment plant to your house? How about within your house?

When I do have to buy bottled water (seldom) I will buy Fiji.... I LOVE the little square bottles! I then keep them and refill them and put them in the fridge!