A Bottled Water the Media Almost Like
You give an inch and they want a mile.
Maybe that’s what the people at Icelandic Water Holdings are thinking now. The company based near
“A close look at one company’s claims of ‘carbon neutrality’ points to problems for the industry,” cried the subhead of Ben Elgin’s article in the August 13 issue of BusinessWeek.
The bottled water industry has been doused with bad press lately because of anti-global warming extremists who claim bottling, packaging and transportation of water
contributes to climate change.
As previously pointed out by the International Bottled Water Association, 100 percent of bottled water containers are recyclable, so if a bottled water consumer wanted to, they could eliminate that part of the bottled water/global warming conundrum.
As for transportation of the product, BusinessWeek also seemed satisfied by the company’s purchase of carbon offsets “to abate the environmental effects of its shipping activity.”
So, assuming one overlooks the bizarre environmental gratification surrounding the carbon offsets, pointed out by economist Arnold Kling on March 6 – “Subsidizing ‘good’ energy in order to justify ‘bad’ energy is like eating salad in order to justify eating dessert. It is an exercise in self-deception,” – it all sounds good, right?
Not really. Icelandic still isn’t doing enough according to the magazine because it doesn’t offset trucks hauling its product from cities around the world.
“Trucking, in particular, generates lots of carbon for which Icelandic simply isn't accounting,”
So it looks like no matter what you do, you just can’t win when it comes to bottled water, global warming and the media.
