THE NUMBERS:
Liters of bottled water imported to the United States in 2006, from:
World: 622 million
France: 194 million
Fiji: 119 million
Italy: 117 million
All other: 192 million
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Much economic and trade theory rests on the concept
of "rationality": that is, consumers search for low price and high
quality, businesses compete to offer it to them, efficiencies
emerge, and the standard of living rises. Thorstein Veblen, in
Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), observed that actual behavior
among some slices of the very wealthy was close to the opposite
of "rational": Wealthy Victorians often searched for ways to pay
higher prices for goods of equal or sometimes lower quality. Rich
families, for example, refused to buy cheap, shiny, and perfectly
made aluminum spoons, insisting instead on expensive silver spoons
that tarnished easily. Veblen called the phenomenon "conspicuous
consumption," and explained it as a powerful desire to buy products
simply to show one's wealth. Thus, as America observes "National
Drinking Water Week," we come to the practice of buying exotic
foreign waters.
Last year, Americans spent about $11 billion on 31 billion liters of
bottled water, which the International Bottled Water Association
says was about a third of all water drinking. The vast majority of
it -- roughly 95 percent -- came from local springs, streams, wells,
and reservoirs. Status-conscious high-end shoppers bought the rest
from abroad; the three top sources, together accounting for 430
million of the 622 million liters of imported waters, were France,
Italy, and the South Pacific island state Fiji. The expense of the
4774-mile trip from Suva to Los Angeles means Fijian water,
advertised for a unique artesian source and "silky" taste, sells for
$2.20 per liter -- twice as much as milk and as much as some beers
and table wines. America's celebrities, gourmet restaurants, and
high-end hotels thus bought 119 million liters of Fijian water for
$48 million, accounting for a tenth of the islands' total exports to
the world. Nonetheless, a taste-test conducted by the Boston Globe
in 2005 came up dry:
"No matter how hard they tried, the testers failed to detect any
significant difference between the bottled and tap waters. The
bottled waters came from as far away as the South Pacific
island of Fiji and ranged in price from 79 cents to $6.82 a
gallon. The MWRA [Massachusetts Water Resource Authority] came
straight out of a Milton tap or the public drinking fountain at
the John F. Kennedy Library in Dorchester and cost a half-cent
a gallon."
FURTHER READING:
The Globe's water connoisseurs test bottle and tap:
The American Water Works Association (operators of drinking water
systems and providers of tap water) observes National Drinking Water
Week:
Americans are the world's 11th-largest per capita drinkers of
bottled water. Italians are first, residents of the United Arab
Emirates second, Mexicans third. Indian, Chinese, Brazilian, and
Indonesian buying is rising fastest, though. The International
Bottled Water Association has statistics:
And back to Fiji -- Fiji Water, the Los-Angeles based importer of
Fijian water, argues that its product's popularity derives from a
unique "silky" taste, resulting from (1) its source "hundreds of
miles away from the nearest continent," and (2) the fact that it
is "artesian," meaning from a subterranean rock reservoir rather
than from an above-ground spring or stream. Is it good for Fiji?
The firm employs 150 Fijians -- one in every thousand Fijian
workers -- and has won a Corporate Excellence award from the U.S.
State Department for charitable and environmental work in Fiji,
along with contributions to the local economy. On the other hand,
the Asian Development Bank suggests that only two-thirds of Fiji's
people have access to an improved water source. Fiji water
background:
The Fiji Water company:
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell presents Fiji Water a
2004 "Corporate Excellence" Award:
The Fijian Embassy happily cites rising water exports (along
with more traditional South Pacific products taro root and
noni, and the vanilla introduced a century ago from Mexico),
though tuna is down this year and clothing exports are a thing
of the past:
Reporting in The Fiji Times backs up the ADB, warning that
Fiji's capital Suva has a serious drinking-water shortage and
that families should boil tap water before drinking it. Public
Works Minister Jone Navakamocea explains the "numerous water
supply disruptions" by citing "low levels at the Wainibuku
Reservoir, pump breakdown at the Waimanu and Savura Pump
Stations, undetected leaks and burst mains, low water pressure
experienced at high level areas of Namadi Heights, Tamavua and
Tacirua and low level areas of Lami and the Nausori/Rewa Delta
and the unmaintained dilapidated condition of our systems and
facilities." The Fiji Times reports:
and
More on Veblen -- Veblen moves on from silver spoons and racing dogs
to argue, in Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) that many of the
habits of the Victorian rich -- especially the fashion world's
preference for ugly, painful, and even physically disabling products
(respectively stove-piped hats, spiked heels, and rib-crushing
corsets) -- were really ways to show an admiring public that the
buyers were so rich that they didn't have to do any physical work. A
sample:
"Much of the charm that invests the patent-leather shoe, the
stainless linen, the lustrous cylindrical hat, and the walking-
stick, which so greatly enhance the native dignity of a
gentleman, comes of their pointedly suggesting that the wearer
cannot bear a hand in any employment that is directly and
immediately of any human use."
Theory of the Leisure Class -- see in particular Chapter 4
on "Conspicuous Consumption," and Chapter 7 on "Dress as an
Expression of the Pecuniary Culture":
A century later, nothing ugly, painful or disabling here. No, not at
all:
PPI TRADE FACT OF THE WEEK
