LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Fiji Water has calculated the carbon footprint of its entire supply chain, from raw materials and packaging to distribution and recycling. Along with changing its operations to lessen its impact, the company is helping a reforestation project in Fiji.
By working with the
Carbon Disclosure Project's (CDP) Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration, Fiji Water calculated the carbon footprint of its products for July 2006-June 2007 was 85,396 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (a figure that includes other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide).
The company's carbon footprint comes from four main areas: emissions from producing raw materials for packaging (29 percent), ocean freight (23 percent), bottling (20 percent) and distribution (17 percent). The rest comes from transporting raw materials and equipment, trucking to port, refrigeration, disposal or recycling of waste, and sales and administration. Fiji Water estimates 75-80 percent of its emissions come from supply chain operations, and it plans to cut down the impact from various stages and encourage suppliers to join the CDP.
By 2010, Fiji Water aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by reducing packaging by 20 percent and have renewable sources provide half the energy of bottling facility and company vehicles. So far it has reduced trucking miles by an average of 26 percent, cut fuel use by its trucks in Fiji in half and will be testing bottles made from 100 recycled materials.
Along with cutting down on emissions, Fiji Water plans to become carbon neutral by offsetting 120 percent of its emissions starting in 2008, although the company is using a forward crediting project that won't offset all of the emissions for a few decades. The company is partnering with
Conservation International on a reforestation project in the Yaqara Valley in Fiji. "We're going to be reforesting degraded grasslands with native forests and using native species," said Sonal Pandya, senior manager of climate change at Conservation International. It will take two to five years to complete planting, and then the group will maintain the land.
The offsets realized after 30 years would be enough to make Fiji Water carbon negative in 2008. Thomas Mooney, senior vice president of sustainable growth for Fiji Water, said the company plans to expand the reforestation project as well as invest in renewable energy to address its carbon footprint beyond 2008. "There really is a lot of land that had historically been rainforest and can be taken back to that form," he said. Fiji Water has set up a new website,
FijiGreen.com, for information on its carbon footprint and rainforest efforts.
