Green is the new black. I know this because, this past weekend, a drunken sorority girl took my Natty Light can out of the trash (with her bare hands) and said, in the voice you are imagining, “Ummm … aren’t you going to recycle that?” I think, at this point, it’s generally accepted social dogma that the more you love the environment, the cooler you are.
But just when you thought there was nothing cooler than your “Make Recyclable BlackBerry Phone Cases, Not War” shirt, you discover Ethos Water. I’m not really sure how it’s taken you so long to discover Ethos, because it’s sold at Starbucks — and you looooove Starbucks. But for the sake of this column, you think Ethos is as recent and fresh as the wearing-leggings-as-pants fad.
If there’s anything cooler than loving the environment (and wearing leggings as pants), it’s loving Africa. Now that Santa Fe cafe is temporarily closed, everyone has taken to hanging out at Darfur rallies and memorizing Angelina Jolie’s babies’ names. Luckily, Ethos Water pledges to donate five cents from every bottle you purchase at Starbucks to helping children in Africa (and potentially other hip continents) get clean drinking water. Finally, a cause I can get behind.
Spending $50 on one of those Gap INSPI(RED) T-shirts just so everyone could tell by looking at me that I care about AIDS was really a little extravagant. Now, I can prominently display my Ethos Water bottle on my desk so everyone in my class will know how much more I love African children than they do. All of this cred and charity for a measly $1.80. This really is the donating of the future. The best part is Starbucks hopes by 2010 Ethos will have donated $10 million!
I’m no math major, but if Ethos is donating five cents of every water bottle to get to the ultimate goal of $10 million, then the company’s revenue will actually end up being $360 million. $360,000,000. Three hundred and sixty million. Revenue. What if these assholes decided instead to donate 10 cents, or even 15 cents of every bottle? What would be one Hummer fewer for them could be twice as much clean water for the children! Why does no one think of the children?!
And $1.80 for a bottle of water? What, is the cap made of gold and studded with diamonds? As inhabitants of a country with clean and drinkable tap water, buying bottled water to help others get clean drinking water is like Canadians buying more health care for themselves to donate a couple of cents to helping poor Americans get health care. This really gets my goat.
This is not to mention the horrific damage that buying plastic water bottles does to the environment, and, not so indirectly, the children without clean water all over the world.
Ethos is manufactured by PepsiCo and isn’t even made with recycled plastic. Instead of contributing to a wildly superfluous consumer industry like bottled water, magnetic ribbon car decals or breast cancer-themed Q-tips, take your $1.80 and put it somewhere where all the money goes directly to the cause. If you’re having trouble thinking of ideas, check out www.universalgiving.org, or just give your money to me … I’ll make sure it gets into the right hands.
Esti Frischling is a junior studio art major. She can be reached at esti at umdbk dot com.
