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...been to Starbucks lately, you may have noticed that they’re selling a new kind of bottled water called Ethos. Ethos, which is wholly owned by Starbucks, is based on the clever idea that consumers will buy more products if they think their purchase helps bring clean water to the developing world...
They promise to give five cents for every bottle they sell to clean water projects in places like Ethiopia and Honduras, with a goal of at least $1 million by the end of 2006 and $10 million over the next five years...
This would seem at odds with the purpose of Ethos, which is to “inspire customers and employees” and “provide clean drinking water around the world,” according to Jennifer Guebert, Starbucks’ Marketing Manager for the Great Northeastern Region. In fact, she says that making more profits “isn’t the goal behind the initiative...
...Starbucks really wants to make a difference, it could donate all of the profits it makes on Ethos to clean water projects—20 times more than the mere nickel it’s donating now. This is the policy of Keeper Springs, a water brand that Harvard sells all over campus. The company, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chris Bartle, and John Hoving, donates all of its after-tax profits to the Waterkeeper Alliance, a nonprofit that works to preserve America’s waterways. But its reach is much more limited than Starbucks’ Ethos...
That cost itself is also worth questioning. It is rather wasteful to buy bottled water at all if you have access to clean tap water, which 1 billion people in the world lack. Not only do the bottles, refrigeration and transportation generate a great deal of waste and pollution, but the money ($9.8 billion in the U.S. annually) could be better spent on projects like those that Ethos is supporting. According to a great article by Tom Standage in the New York Times, “clean water could be provided to everyone on earth for an outlay...