Water

 

My first contact with Fiji. Two products I was given on the flight
 in from Singapore. The motifs on the washbag fascinated me,
so I was anyway going to dig into their provenance. While at
it I thought I might as well do the water, too. :)

Just a few lines about the tap water here - that's supplied by Water Authority of Fiji which covers mostly urban areas. Their history and operations are available here. About 12% of the population do not have access to safe drinking water in the remote areas. Most tourist/expat guides to Fiji advise that the tap water in urban areas is safe to drink but out in the villages it is wise to boil your drinking water. I cannot vouch for this personally as I have not used tap water for drinking since I was a kid. My mother boiled and filtered the water ever since I can remember.  I got  used to  bottled water when I left India in the 90s for Bahrain (tap water there at that time was a tad too salty for drinking because the groundwater had been progressively contaminated by the sea). That system has stayed with us right through all the relocations. 

Fiji has substantial groundwater aquifers which have been tapped and developed for bottling. Bottled water is a major export product for Fiji. In 2021, out of total exports of roughly FJD 1 billion, bottled water accounted for a 24% share of the basket (click here to read more). It is far and away the single most dominant product, because the next group, Wood, comes in at around 7%, less than a third. Mineral water exports have been growing at 5-6% p.a. and according to most estimates will continue to a significant export earner. There are several companies supplying the local market, but in this post I'm focussing on the most well known, extensively exported and marketed on a luxe platform - Fiji Water. 

David Gilmour (not the famous PF musician! a Canadian businessman) first invested in Fiji in the 1960s. Remember that in the 60s the tourism market took off here, a number of properties were developed and hotels set up?  Well, David Gilmour bought up property in Fiji with his then business partner Peter Munk and started a hotel chain, which they sold a decade later. Gilmour next bought a private island in the Lomaviti group  called Wakaya Island in 1973 and carried out some major development work there - over 20 kms of road, a church, gym, school, water reservoir, jetty, airstrip, marina and what have you. He also set up an exclusive  luxury resort called Wakaya Club. Over the years, many celebrities have visited and stayed there. In 2016, majority share of the property was sold to  the Seagrams heiress Clare Bronfman, later to be convicted for human trafficking (some creepy-crawlies always manage to find their way in to paradise!) 

Gilmour founded Fiji Water in 1996 after the aquifer at Yaqara Valley was discovered. He sold the operations to Lynda and Stewart Resnick, husband and wife owners of the Wonderful group of California, in 2004. Lynda developed a brand strategy based on the water's exoticness and purity - Earth's Finest Water. By 2008, Fiji Water had become the number 1  in the US bottled water market, ahead of all other brands including Evian. In keeping with its luxury positioning, it uses celebrity endorsements and brand embedding in films like 'Bullet Train,'  TV shows such as 'The Sopranos' and product placement in glam, hi-visibility events.

Source. Fiji Water product placement at the 2019 Golden
Globes Award function. Being seen at high profile locations
and being sipped by high profile celebrities is the route Fiji
Water has taken rather than regular TV commercials. 

There have been myriad controversies about Fiji Water from time to time, some of which can be found here in this article. However, Fiji Water's own website refutes some of these allegations with claims of sustainability, community development and its various CSR initiatives through the Fiji Water Foundation. Lynda and Stewart have faced criticism for their intensive water use in drought prone California for their other projects as well. Read more about that here.

PS I do not use Fiji Water, too expensive to use by the gallon. I might buy a bottle on the road somewhere if I need a drink desperately and no other brand is available. :) 

However, for the life of me I can't see why there is this accusatory tone and finger pointing at Fiji Water because there's a 12% segment of the Fijian population which can't access safe/tap water. Firstly, it's a bit naive to expect a private corporation to take care of sanitation and drinking water needs. Development of infrastructure and basic facilities should be the purview of the government, they can of course get into private-public partnerships, but that's a different discussion altogether.

Does it make sense,  in a plastic-inundated world to encourage the use of millions of single use bottles? Does it make sense to buy bottled water from halfway across the globe instead of using locally bottled water - not to me it doesn't, but then I am not the one who's buying the product, the US market is.  The company is simply catering to a demand, like all corporations do. It is the lawmakers' jobs to see that they do so in a way that benefits the consumers and economy in Fiji as well as US. It is also for the consumers to wake up to the mountains of plastic pollution and demand recyclable, ecofriendly, sustainable packaging alternatives. Unless we are more discerning, it is beyond naive to expect corporations to change. 

All this month I'm writing about Aspects of Fiji, which is where I'm at the mo. And where the sum of its winsome parts is wonderfully greater than the whole!

Did you know that there are twelve species of whales and dolphins native to Fiji? And hundreds of coral species? Also quite a few species of sharks. They all make Fiji one of the most stunning dive sites in the world. Read more here. 

~ Thank you for reading ~

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2023