Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle

How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?

Fiji water has become the “It-water” of America. I’ve done a blind taste test of bottled waters and all of us picked Fiji for it’s distinctive clean taste. Anna Lenzer, reporter for Mother Jones magazine, delves into the good and bad of the chic water passing everyone’s lips  from Obama to Paris Hilton.

Even though it’s shipped from the opposite end of the globe, even though it retails for nearly three times as much as your basic supermarket water, Fiji is now America’s leading imported water, beating out Evian.

Anna Lenzer brings up Fiji’s tax free status, whether it lives up to its claims of being green, and its strong hold on the country of Fiji.

(The) ambition for Fiji Water was “to become the biggest taxpayer in the country.” Yet the tax break, originally scheduled to expire in 2008, remains in effect, and neither the company nor the government will say whether or when it might end. And when Fiji has tried to wring a bit of extra revenue from the company, the response has been less than cooperative. Last year, when the government attempted to impose a new tax on water bottlers, Fiji Water called it “draconian” (a term it’s never used for the regime’s human rights violations) and temporarily shut down its plant in protest.

What’s also interesting about this article are the follow up comments. One by a person who lived in Fiji:

Fiji Water cannot make any political comments without having serious problems with the military dictatorship. Therefore, it makes little sense to press them for comments on the government.

I too have strong reservations about the tax free status of Fiji Water. However, tax-free status is not unusual in Fiji.

All in all a good read and something to think about the next time the waiter poses the question ” bottled or tap?”

Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle | Mother Jones.