FIJI Water has renovated its Los Angeles office with the goal of achieving LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified status through the U.S. Green Building Council, which takes into account water savings, energy efficiency, materials and resources selection and indoor environmental quality.

We recently moved into this beautiful new office space, the design of which considered our employees, our company and the environment in every detail. LEED focuses not only on environmental benefits, but also employee health and well-being, resulting in a workplace design that’s good for people and good for the environment.

One of the office’s most striking features is the abundance of soft and natural light. The workspace walls are slightly lower than those of typical cubicles and include window panels along the top for maximum exposure to the building’s natural light while still providing privacy. In addition, our management team elected to have only four offices in this space, all along one wall, and those offices have large interior glass walls that allow an abundance of natural light to come into the general work area. The natural light is complemented by “barrel lighting” which provides direct and indirect (reflected) light that is much softer and easier on the eyes than traditional direct lighting.

Each workspace is designed efficiently and comfortably. My personal favorite is the multi-purpose mobile filing cabinet that doubles as cushioned seating for visitors. It’s almost as comfortable as the Knoll Chadwick ergonomic chair that every employee has! (In fact, all of the office furniture was manufactured by Knoll, which specializes in sustainably-made furniture that promotes employee comfort and well-being, and has a LEED-certified plant itself.) Other workspace features include:

• Tower cabinet with shelves to store binders, books, etc.
• Narrow cubby for hanging coats or sweaters and for storing personal items like yoga mats and purses
• Flat screen monitors that take up less desk space
• Floating shelves for in/out boxes, pencil holders, etc., keeping desktops free of clutter

The new workspace was manufactured using clean technologies like VOC-free adhesives, low-VOC paints, and recycled steel, aluminum and fabrics. It also includes bamboo floors and cabinetry. Bamboo is a “rapidly renewable building material and product (made from plants that are typically harvested within a ten-year or shorter cycle),” to quote the LEED application form. In other words, bamboo grows and regrows super fast (I have some in my garden, it grows like a weed), so it’s more sustainable than traditional wood materials.

Other less readily visible but equally important features of the new office include the following:

• The lighting power density is 25% more efficient than required by the Title 24 standard. (Title 24 is California’s energy efficiency standard for residential and non-residential buildings.)
• 90% of the kitchen appliances are Energy Star certified. The only exceptions are small appliances like toasters that don’t normally receive an Energy Star certification.
• The bathrooms now have dual flush toilets, resulting in a 30% reduction in water usage. (Incidentally, these are very common in Fiji and other countries, but still unusual in the U.S.)

We were awarded maximum LEED credits for our successful effort to recycle everything possible when disposing of the previous office materials. In total we recycled over 75% of the construction waste.

We hope to have more good news about our efforts toward LEED certification status once the project is complete and all credits are tallied. Stay tuned for updates!

Hi everyone! I know I haven’t posted in ages…my apologies! I’ve been unusually busy and short on time the past few weeks.

It all started when my microwave stopped working three weeks ago. I suppose it was due…it was quite old. However, it was part of a microwave-oven combined unit, and the oven still works great. So I didn’t want to replace the microwave, because that would also mean replacing a perfectly good oven. And the prospect of sending a good oven to landfill - or even recycling - was just too much for my devoted green heart to bear.

Because I’m usually busy, I try to save time on cooking dinner during the week by making a big meal one night and then microwaving leftovers for another night or two. I like to dress up the leftovers with freshly sauteed vegetables, grated cheese, or something else quick and easy. Without a microwave, I figured I should cook smaller meals each night, just enough to eat for that night, then start from scratch the next day. (I’ve tried reheating leftovers on the stove before, but the food kept getting overcooked.)

It was certainly nice to eat a freshly prepared dinner every night…but after a week I just couldn’t handle the time sink any more. So I decided to just eat a good breakfast and lunch each day, and not eat dinner any more unless I was out with family and friends. Hey, that could help me lose weight too, and who doesn’t want to lose a few pounds? And I could use the extra time to catch up on everything I’d fallen behind on (like this blog!) during the Week of Freshly Prepared Dinners.

Filled with hope and good intentions, I launched my new dinner-less resolution. But I don’t like the feeling of overeating at any meal, so I’d eat a normal, moderate breakfast and lunch, and then when “dinnertime” rolled around, I’d be pretty hungry. As it got later in the evening, I’d be sooooo hungry. Oh, it was painful. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when even a piece of chocolate isn’t satisfying.

So I started going to bed earlier and earlier to avoid feeling hungry…in bed by 8:30 pm or 9 pm, and up by 5 am. You’d think I’d at least be able to catch up on my life in those spare morning hours, right? Nope. Whether it’s running errands, or working, or whatever, most businesses and services aren’t open that early. So I’d spend a lovely few hours working in my garden…and falling further behind on everything I needed to get done. Or - like last night - I’d hang out late with friends, then forget to reset my alarm and still wake up at 5 am, and stumble sleepily through the rest of the day. (And the blog continued to languish.)

I was explaining this to a co-worker (who noted my sleepy expression), and he pointed out that I’d reduced my carbon footprint over the past couple of weeks by not cooking, eating, or getting a new microwave. I’d saved energy by not cooking, avoided emissions from food production by not eating, and saved money and energy by not buying a microwave. That put a smile on my sleepy face.

To make a rough estimate of the emissions I’ve avoided: A week’s worth of dinner for me - back when I had a microwave - might have looked like this with a glass of wine every night:

• Monday: Grill 8 oz organic steak, eat half of it with a baked potato and steamed broccoli. (I usually offset the healthiness of the broccoli by putting generous amounts of sour cream or butter on the potato.)
• Tuesday: Go vegetarian and make daal, a curried lentil soup. (Takes me back to Fiji where this is a staple dish.)
• Wednesday: Slice leftover steak thinly, pile onto toasted ciabatta bread, add grated Havarti cheese, and reheat, then top with freshly sauteed button mushrooms and Vidalia onions. (Heaven. You gotta try this.)
• Thursday: Microwave leftover daal. (It’s almost the end of the week, I’m keeping it simple.)
• Friday: Eat a serving of sushi. (Happiness.)

Okay, I had too much fun writing that menu. I love to eat. But I’m sleepy so I’m going to keep the calculations simple. Let’s say I eat the steak and fish and drink the wine, but pretend the non-meat stuff has no carbon footprint. (Vegetarian options often do have a lower carbon footprint.)

An 8 oz conventional steak results in about 8,300 g CO2eq across its lifecycle, and an 8 oz organic steak causes about 4,980 g CO2eq. Sushi-grade tuna, during the summer months, results in about 1,120 g CO2eq per 3 oz serving. And a bottle of wine causes about 2,650 g CO2eq and holds about 5 glasses.

So 4,980 (steak) + 1,120 (tuna) + 2,650 (wine) = 8,750 g CO2eq per week from the food and wine’s footprints alone. And 3 minutes in the microwave means about 30 g CO2eq, so if I’m reheating stuff twice a week, that adds another 60 g CO2eq. So I’m avoiding at least 8,810 g CO2eq per week in my dinner-less state…and definitely more, since I’m not counting emissions from cooking or turning on my kitchen lights, or the lifecycle carbon footprints of the potato, sour cream, broccoli, lentils, ciabatta, cheese, mushrooms, onions, rice, nori (seaweed), herbs and spices.

At this rate, in a year I’d avoid about 0.5 tonne CO2eq (8,810 g CO2eq/week * 52 weeks * 1 tonne / 1,000,000 g). According to Conservation International’s carbon footprint calculator, my annual carbon footprint is 8.2 tonnes. So if I can keep skipping dinner for a year, I’ll cut my carbon footprint by at least 5%! Not as big a reduction as I’d like, but every little bit counts.

So what do you think? Should I replace the microwave-oven unit? Buy a new standalone microwave…and a new microwave cart to put it on? Sponge free meals off my neighbors? Go out to eat every night and support local businesses? Just keep on skipping dinner and going to sleep at 8:30 pm? Do you have tips on how to reheat food on the stove successfully? Discuss!

On May 28, the Los Angeles Air Force Base (AFB) and the Defense Commissary Agency held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to dedicate the commissary’s new rooftop photovoltaic power system. FIJI Water was proud to be one of the sponsors for the ceremony, which recognized the Los Angeles AFB Commissary as the first military commissary in the world to become solar powered.

The solar power system produces enough electricity daily to power over ten households. The Los Angeles AFB Commissary has also demonstrated good environmental stewardship with initiatives that include recycling plastic and cardboard and installing energy-efficient lighting.

Don’t you love it when people serve their country, provide great benefits for their service members, and take care of the environment too? You can read more about the solar power system dedication on the Los Angeles AFB web site.

When I was a kid, I watched documentaries on PBS that talked about the importance of protecting rainforests. (Yeah, I was a nerdy kid who liked educational TV!) That instinctively made sense to me - I’d see those beautiful landscapes and interesting animals, and of course I wanted them to be safe always.

But the part I thought was really cool was how the local people lived in the rainforest - mainly because it looked like fun to move around your neighborhood on rafts instead of on land. Now I realize that’s not actually the case in every rainforest or in all seasons…but when you’ve only got a few years under your belt you miss some of the finer details.

Well, I’m a bit older now, but I’ve learned my initial instincts were sound…and also learned more about why rainforest conservation is so important. Here are the facts:

• Deforestation is the second largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions today, following only the power generation sector; it accounts for almost 20% of those emissions, or twice the emissions from all the world’s cars, trucks, and airplanes combined
• Tropical deforestation in developing countries is responsible for nearly all (96%) of the emissions from deforestation
• Forests protect water and soil quality and provide livelihoods for over 1.6 billion people around the world; many of them are the world’s poorest people in Africa, South America and Asia
• But less than 5% of tropical forests are managed sustainably, putting these livelihoods at risk
• Tropical forests play a critical role in protecting unique animals and plants you can’t find anywhere else in the world

Yet incentives to prevent deforestation were somehow not included in the Kyoto Protocol. You might wonder why the protocol didn’t address this if it’s so important.

To paint it in simple strokes: Developing nations wanted compensation for not cutting down their rainforests. After all, they argue, if they’re giving up income from forestry and logging, they should be able to make up the lost funds in another way. But industrialized nations didn’t want to pay developing nations for “doing nothing.” So they reached an impasse.

It’s our hope that future international agreements will incorporate effective action to reduce deforestation. In the meantime, we’ve been seeking to do our part by partnering with Conservation International to protect the Sovi Basin. Now, we obviously don’t treat the Sovi Basin project as an “offset,” because it’s already there - we didn’t plant it. But we knew the benefits the Sovi Basin would provide to Fiji and the rest of the world - shelter for unique species, watershed protection, erosion control, and carbon sequestration - were benefits we wanted to ensure forever.

And hopefully I’ll get to ride on a raft in the rainforest for real one of these days…whee!

To learn more about conservation and reforestation efforts going on around the world, check out Conservation International’s web site.

Ben Jelen is an extraordinary singer-songwriter with a passion for the environment. This passion is infused throughout his music - check out the video of his single “Wreckage” below - and his life - his tour is carbon neutral. We’re thrilled and delighted to have Ben join us today and share his thoughts on FIJI Water, the Ben Jelen Foundation, recycling, and what we can all do to help care for our planet. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s Ben Jelen…

FIJI WATER

What interests me most in Fiji water is that they are a carbon-negative company — this means that their net activities actually reduce carbon emissions!! - how is that even possible?

To understand, I imagined a world without Fiji water, where their company had not existed. In this world, there was no effort to replant old rainforest. In this world there was no profit set aside to offset carbon emissions — no money put into offset programs that plant trees and build infrastructure for clean energy. In fact this world had the island of Fiji exporting timber, depleting the beautiful Sovi basin. Fiji water shows us that any company, even one that is up against a literal ocean’s worth of emissions can still have a positive impact on the environment. It takes real dedication and I applaud them for setting this example.

Taking advantage of new advances in green technology, Fiji water fits into my philosophy on Environmentalism - they are targeting a way of operating cleanly, realizing it takes time to get there, so starting now. Fiji water is not abandoning their business, but taking something that is part of the problem and turning it into a solution.

It is in this train of philosophy that I have started the Ben Jelen Foundation. As a musical artist consistently writing and talking about these problems, the foundation has been an amazing outlet for me, and a real way of helping with the environmental issues out there, focusing on solutions rather than problems. We kicked the foundation off at South by Southwest earlier this 2008 and it was a great success - since, I’ve continued to raise money - the money will be donated to the four following areas, with the specific recipients changing from time to time.

• Education: Local (New York) education of teens on environmental issues.
• Political: Donations to groups that lobby for environmental protection at the political level.
• Humanitarian: Give to those worse affected by climate change.
• Investment: Continue the long process of investing in clean energy infrastructure.

We’re excited to partner with Fiji water, talk about the issues and watch our progress - Something we can all help out with now is to recycle all plastics. Once the product is in our hands we do also have the responsibility of ‘completing the cycle.’

Please enjoy the video for my song “Wreckage” - This song is about hope, that the choice of taking care of our planet is very much in our hands. I’m so glad to see companies change the landscape from the inside out, its exciting and real!

For any more info, visit www.benjelen.com/foundation

I’m feeling inspired after spending last week in Fiji. Fiji, of course, is so beautiful that it’s always inspiring. On top of this, the team at the bottling facility is doing some fantastic work to reduce our carbon footprint and improve recycling rates in our local community. They encouraged me tremendously, so I’d like to share some of their stories with you over the next few postings.

Let’s start with recycling at the bottling facility. Paul, our Director of Production Operations & Engineering, has been hard at work over the past year and a half figuring out how to recycle manufacturing waste materials. Thanks to his efforts and those of our recycling partners in Australia, we’ve reduced by 70% the amount of manufacturing waste taken to landfills. Paul’s ultimate goal is for the FIJI Water plant to become a “zero waste” facility, meaning we will reduce, reuse, or recycle all waste.

At first Paul started with plastic and cardboard, for which there are many eager buyers already. Not content with that, however, Paul and the team persisted and found buyers for lab coats, shoe covers, hair nets, pallet strapping, bulk bags and drums, empty spools, and more. (Who knew you could recycle this kind of stuff too?)

When looking for buyers to take the recyclables, Paul simply asks that they pay enough to cover the cost of transportation. With popular materials like PET, however, he can usually get more. So he’s taken the money earned and reinvested it into the recycling infrastructure at the plant. This helps us recycle more materials and do so more efficiently. The bottling facility is now capable of recycling not only its own waste, but also recyclable materials brought in by local residents from their villages and towns. This is important because there is no other recycling infrastructure available to the local community.

In case you are wondering whether the greenhouse gas emissions from transporting recyclable materials to buyers are worth the effort to recycle, here are the numbers from our base year.

• Emissions created by transporting recyclables: 13 tonnes CO2eq
• Emissions avoided by recycling materials instead of producing new ones: 619 tonnes CO2eq

The net impact is an emissions reduction of 606 tonnes CO2eq, having the same effect as taking 111 passenger vehicles off the road for a year or planting over 15,000 trees.

This works on an individual level too. Every time you recycle the packaging for anything you use - food and beverage, for example - you reduce its carbon footprint. Play our recycling game to learn how this works!

We here at FIJI Water hear a lot of complaints about “food miles,” ours in particular. The concept is that the longer your food travels, the worse it is for the environment.

We think this is a load of hooey…and so do scientists who have studied lifecycle carbon footprints. The key word here is lifecycle - how a product is developed or packaged, what the transport mode is, and other factors can have a far greater impact for better or worse than the mere distance traveled.

The New Yorker recently published an article about carbon footprints that, among other things, summarized major scientific studies on “food miles.” These studies have shown:

• Apples imported from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can have a lower carbon footprint than apples raised fifty miles away. Adrian Williams of the Natural Resources Department of Cranfield University, in England, explains: “In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the U.K., which helps productivity.” This means you get more good apples per acre, and the manmade energy required to grow the crop is therefore lower. New Zealand also has many renewable energy sources with little or no carbon impact.
• Lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped to England has one-fourth the carbon footprint of lamb raised and consumed in England. Lambs in New Zealand feed on pastures that generally require less fertilizer than grazing land in the U.K., and fertilizer has a big carbon impact.
• Importing beans from Uganda or Kenya to Europe is less carbon-intensive than growing beans in Europe. The farms in Uganda and Kenya are small, rarely use tractors, and fertilize the crop with manure, while European farms often require energy-dependent irrigation systems.
• Roses shipped from Holland to England have a seed-to-store carbon footprint six times that of roses air freighted from Kenya. That’s because the Dutch roses almost always are grown in greenhouses, which use lots of energy.

And here’s an example closer to home for us: We used to send product to New York by ship from Fiji to Los Angeles, then truck from Los Angeles to the East Coast. Now we send the product by ship through the Panama Canal to Philadelphia or Newark, then truck to New York - a route that covers 50% more miles, but reduces emissions by 55%. This is because ocean freight causes 85% less emissions than trucking. Had we used food miles as a metric, we would never have made this change.

The real problem with the “food miles” concept is that it misleads people who are genuinely trying to make ethical decisions. There are still people who are choosing to “buy/eat local” and thereby actually making their environmental impact worse than it otherwise would have been. It’s unfair to them and to the environment. Of course, it’s hard for people to make the right decisions unless they have the right information, which is why it’s so important for companies to publish the full lifecycle carbon footprints of their products.

ELLE Magazine has recognized FIJI Water in its annual green issue with an ELLE 2008 Green Award! We were hailed - alongside other recipients like Brad Pitt, the Energy Action Coalition and Paul and Stella McCartney - as one of the “people, products and concepts that put energy, and our planet, in the right place.” They highlighted the fact that FIJI Water is “carbon negative – not neutral – this year,” and spoke about our commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the bottling and shipping process, to preserve the Fijian rainforest, and to minimize packaging.

Take a look at what the other award winners are doing too. It’s so inspiring!

Our Senior VP Sustainable Growth, Thomas Mooney, recently spoke with Sustainable Life Media. In this interview, Thomas explains how we’re planning to fulfill the FIJI Green promise and answers the criticism that “bottled water” and “sustainable” don’t belong in the same sentence. You can read the interview here or listen here.

Last November, FIJI Water promised to reduce its carbon footprint by 25% by 2010. In the past few months, we’ve taken a number of steps toward that goal:

• We’ve started producing the 1.5 L product with an initial 7% reduction in packaging.
• We’ve reduced by 70% the amount of manufacturing waste materials taken to landfills.
• We’re using more fuel-efficient trucks in Fiji to transport the product from plant to port, resulting in a 50% reduction in fuel usage.
• By optimizing our logistics, we’ve reduced trucking miles from warehouses to distributors by 26% on average.

These changes reflect a lot of hard work and initiative on the part of many people throughout the company, especially our operations and logistics teams. We look forward to sharing more good news like this over the coming months.