Gallon for gallon it is more than five times the price of gasoline. Gallon for gallon, it is more than 10,000 times the price of tap water. To all the wealthy celebs drinking expensive water because of how great it tastes, or how “green” it is, I have one question. Water you thinking?
Now, what brand of water am I talking about here? For me, there’s only one brand of water that is glamorous (Water can be glamorous?), and that is Fiji water. Buoy-ed by some exceptional branding, and marketing, Fiji water has been able to ascend to be the world’s most luxurious brand of water in only a little more than a decade.
For many just scraping by – perhaps with barely enough money for gas, if they even have a car – paying 2.25 for 12 ounces of water is a ludicrous expense. You read that right. For one gallon of Fiji, you’d pay about $20, just about 7 times the national average for a gallon of gas (Premium grade gasoline of course, Ferrari cup holders are now specifically designed to hold Fiji bottles! Who knew!). Now this may seem like a lot of water, but let’s say I stop buying Fiji water for long enough to not buy 46 gallons of the stuff. Considering it’s recommended to have about a half-gallon of water per day, in only three months I would have saved enough money by drinking tap water to buy a one-way ticket to Fiji and never have to pay $2.25 for a bottle of water ever again.
Now, while I’m sure it does sound crazy to spend 17 dollars per gallon more on water from Fiji than on gasoline, or to only need to cut out Fiji water for three months to buy a plane ticket to this exotic land, the story gets even stranger from here. Fiji water is actually the number one export from the island of Fiji, and when the government has tried to charge them higher taxes to use the spring – so you know, they can help provide safe drinking water to the 53% of Fijians who don’t have it – Fiji has shut down operations for a couple days and the government has quickly backed down. Remarkably, this means that many wealthy Americans can actually get water from the island of Fiji easier than many people who physically live on Fiji can get it.
So next time you’re looking at a bottle of Fiji, or Evian, remember to peer beneath the surface and remember the truth that bottled water isn’t actually worth that premium. Next time you see a bottle of Fiji remember that the majority of Fiji doesn’t even have tap water. And most of all next time you’re drinking an Evian, do you know what I’ll think of you? Try spelling Evian backwards.
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