Gem of the day

It's been a long time coming, but the day of reckoning is finally here for our friends on the marketing team over at FIJI water. You'll remember FIJI for their ingeniously nauseating campaign, 'Every Drop is Green'. But perhaps you don't remember their claim that their product--mmm, bottled water--was 'carbon negative'. It's probably the worst corporate environmental commitment of all time: ill-conceived, poorly communicated and simply incorrect.


There's two gems here. The first is that the lawsuit is being filed by a random citizen of California. No comment on that. The second is FIJI's substantiation of its carbon negative claim:


"Since 2008, FIJI Water has been a carbon-negative brand. We are the first and only major bottled water company to make this commitment, under which we will continue to offset 120% of our emissions. That means that we are not only mitigating our environmental impact but also making up for a little bit of someone else's."


Can somebody get these guys a guide to carbon offsetting? In a nutshell: offset only what you can't actually reduce.


Here's another little issue: their proudest offsetting achievement is a CI-assured forest restoration project in Fiji. Um, how about getting the locals some...water?


Right.