Mount Franklin - greenwashing or not?
Hmm. I think this is greenwashing. What do you reckon?
Mount Franklin bottled water is currently running a trio of ‘earth-conscious’ promotions. One is that you can win a Prius, and another is that you can win a trip to an eco-resort in the Daintree rainforest. The catch is that to enter, you have to buy a multi-pack (for the other two) of their bottled water. The third promotion is one where you sms them part of the bar-code of a bottle of their water, and they’ll plant a tree in your name.
I love my Prius, and I’d love to have a holiday at an eco-resort in the Daintree, but not if I have to buy such a stupidly wasteful product as a bottle of water to win. Landcare is doing the tree-planting. I’m all for planting trees, it’s usually a fantastic idea, but I don’t think one tree per bottle is a good trade-off for the environmental problems caused by bottled water.
A few facts about bottled water:
- It takes at least 3 litres of water, 80ml of oil and 75 grams of CO2 to produce a plastic bottle that will hold 1 litre of water (if I’ve done my maths correctly). That’s before you count the energy required to power the industrial plants that make the bottles, the oil required to transport the empty bottles to where they get filled, and then ship or drive them to the distribution plants, and then to the supermarkets.
- Mount Franklin claims to be more efficient (warning: pdf) in their production and packaging than other manufacturers, using only 1.3 litres of water per bottle, and keeping transportation minimal - they don’t mention the amount of oil used to make the plastic, though.
- Coca-Cola Amatil (the owner of Mount Franklin) paid just $181 dollars for a water-extraction licence which allows them to take 66 million litres of water from the Mangrove Mountain aquifer in NSW.
- Bottled water is more expensive than petrol - $1.57 per litre of Mount Franklin. Tap water only costs $1.20 per tonne in Melbourne and Sydney.
- In a taste test, most people can’t tell the difference between tap and bottled water; and in Australia, the health benefits aren’t all that much.
- Even though PET bottles are completely recyclable, only 35% of the bottles actually get recycled. The remaining 65% of bottles just end up in landfill, taking over 20 years to break down.
Besides, the SMS has to be sent to one of those promotional numbers that make the promoter a lot of money, similar to Australian Idol and other call-in competitions. If Coca-Cola Amatil has already committed to planting 250,000 trees, then why do they need us to send them text messages? I think this is an entirely cynical move on their part, an attempt to look like they care about the environment while making money from the fact that being green is sorta cool at the moment.
I won’t be entering any of these competitions, in spite of being tempted by the holiday 
But do you think this counts as greenwashing, since the product is pretty bad for the environment, or is it a genuine attempt to do something good?
Tags: bottled water
February 18th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
They’re just riding the green bandwagon. If they’re going run a competition anyway, it’s good that the prizes are eco-friendly. But this seems to be an attempt to align their product with environmental values, which is disingenuous to say the least. I am guessing they’re getting their defense ready for when the public’s attention turns from plastic bags to plastic bottles…
February 19th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Funnily enough, I saw Ian Kiernan talking about how bad bottled water is in the news just this morning. I wonder if he saw the competition and had the same thought we did!
February 19th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Total greenwashing. It doesn’t get much *less* green that bottled water!
February 19th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Call me cynical, but I think it’s just greenwashing.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Hehe, I’m glad I’m not the only one who was annoyed by it then. I try to keep an open mind, but it’s *bottled water* after all.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:01 am
Coca-Cola is a company and its first interest is to its shareholders. You can”t blame them so much as any company is going to try it on. I think the real criticism should be reserved for Landcare which is taking sponsorship dollars from all sorts of environmentally-friendly companies such as GM Holden, Alcoa, the aluminium company and Coles Group.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Julian, I don’t blame Coca-Cola for doing what they’ve always done, but that doesn’t mean I want to support their greenwashing either
If we don’t call them on this stuff, then they’ll just keep doing it.
I’m a little disappointed in Landcare, but if they want to get their projects funded, they’ve got to get the money from somewhere. If the public or the government won’t take care of these things, it puts them in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
If you want to enter the promotion you can do it on the mount franklin website. You just need the last four digits of a bar-code. 5377 should do the trick so you don’t even have to buy a bottle of water.!
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Maybe it’s greenwashing, but can’t the same (or worse) be said about ANY bottled beverage? I don’t understand why bottled water is being vilified when the same criticism could be labelled against juice, milk, soft drink, cordial, iced tea, beer, wine, etc, etc - anything sold in small disposable glass or plastic containers. The health and evironmental benefits of drinking water over these flavoured alternatives is ignored.
So I guess what I’m saying is the ‘problem’ is people’s tendency to purchase beverages and beverage containers when tap water is abundant and almost free. Isn’t consumer behaviour the problem? Bottled Australian springwater is probably the least worst alternative to tap water.
I’d rather see people buy a bottle of water to win a Prius than buy a bottle of Cola to win a 4WD.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
For me, bottled water is more irritating because juice and milk aren’t available on tap. I do agree with you that disposable bottles for any drink are a problem, but I think it’s best to tackle the silliest one first: I feel like it’s easier to convince people of why they should stop when you can point out the ridiculousness of buying something that they can get for free. Once you’ve got people understanding that, then you can move on to similar issues.
Not too long ago there was a “buy chocolate milk to win a Hummer”, and I was moved/annoyed enough to send a letter of complaint to the company. A few readers here did the same, and we actually got a reply from them.