Voss Saves California Drought

This water bottle has travelled 9,697 miles to save the California drought!
and why I’m never drinking bottled water again…

“If it’s yellow, let it mellow…”

This is the rallying cry of the California drought. My kids are huge enforcers of this policy, and I have stopped being surprised seeing unflushed toilets at our home.

The drought is top of mind for many Californians. On a recent trip to our favorite breakfast spot, I saw the following table tent on our restaurant table:

At first glance, I thought this was a thoughtful promotion from Voss to their restaurant partners. Then I started to think about the premise behind this promotional offer.

Instead of providing tap water, the restaurant will sell me 16.9 ounces of Voss water for $1. Granted, this may be a discount from the retail price of a bottle of Voss… but how (exactly) is this helping to impact the drought and help the environment?

Channeling my 21^st century inner Woodward and Bernstein, I jumped into action. Where is my $1 going… and how is this helping the drought/environment?

To answer this question, I found five tools on the Internet that helped me put this into perspective:

Tool 1 – Putting Iveland on the map
Tool 2 – Putting the water in the bottle
Tool 3 – Estimating travel route/time
Tool 4 – Calculating cost to ship one bottle
Tool 5 – Local water option – converting hectares to ounces

I first followed the money to the origin of Voss water, the city of Iveland. This city in southern Norway is about 101 miles square and it is home to 1,254 people (the 396^th largest town in Norway).

Tool #1 – Putting Iveland on the Map

O.K., I’ve followed the money to its source, the 396^th largest town in Norway. This delicious water is purified as it ascends from the source through two miles of Icelandic lava rock. But the water is only part of the story… the fine people of Iveland have to put this in something for its ocean voyage to our shores.

Tool #2 – How much to package the water???

http://www.containerandpackaging.com

I’m sure the supply chain wizards at Voss can get a significant discount versus what I found online. I did find a similar sized bottle (and cap) to provide at least a baseline cost for the packaging materials needed for each bottle.

OK, so far we have some delicious Norwegian water (I’m assuming the cost at the source is near zero) in a glass bottle with a plastic lid.

TOTAL COST SO FAR… $0.78 per bottle.

Tool #3 – Estimating Travel Route and Time

http://www.searates.com

In addition to a snazzy mapping tool… searates.com was able to calculate the 15,606 kilometers (9,697 miles) that the bottle will travel from Oslo to Santa Barbara. Some more googling uncovered that an average speed of a merchant ship is 15 knots (or about 28 kilometers/hour). That puts our bottle at sea for about 23 days from port to port.

Tool #4 – How much to ship one 16.9 oz. bottle from Oslo to Santa Barbara?

http://www.shiphawk.com

My foray into sea rates was like many experiences I have in “Internet Rabbit Holes”… interesting, but not very informative.

Thankfully, a local start up in Santa Barbara was able to give much more granular data about the cost of bringing that delicious Iveland water from Oslo to Santa Barbara. Their proprietary algorithm optimizes supply chains and reduces shipping and fulfillment costs.

Assuming that Voss ships full containers of water (versus individual pallets)… the cost to ship one bottle from Oslo to Santa Barbara is $0.16. In case you are wondering, each container of 16.9 oz. Voss bottles would hold 40,656 bottles.

TOTAL COST SO FAR… $0.94 per bottle.

The Big Environmental Picture

So how is this $1 bottle of water affecting the environment? While the estimated hard cost of $0.94 makes the $1 price at Summerland Beach Cafe seem reasonable… it’s important to look at the environmental costs that aren’t as obvious in this exploration.

An average sized container ship burns 225 tons of bunker fuel per day (source: of Global Studies, Hofstra University)
The annual sulphur fuel emissions of one average sized container ship are equal to the annual sulphur fuel emissions of 50 MILLION CARS… that’s right… 50 million! (Source: ENFOS software platform – enfos.com).
While Norway bottled water details were not available… the International Bottled Water Association estimates that for every liter of bottled water produced… 1.39 liters of water are needed. So for every bottle that is shipped to Santa Barbara, a little over a bottle is washed down the drain in the production process.

Tool #5 – Montecito Water – How does it compare???

http://www.metricconversions.com

In reviewing my monthly water bill (where rates are calculated in the consumer friendly “HCF units”!)… My 9 HCF’s cost me $45.27.

Thanks to the metric conversions website… I know that this 9 HCF’s is equivalent to 6,732 US Gallons. A quick online calculator translates this to 861,696 ounces… or approximately .00088 cents (less than 1/100^th of a cent!) for 16.9 oz. of water.

SO WHAT???

What have I learned from my exploration of this Voss water promotion?

I’m a geek – I can confidently say that no other patron at Summerland Beach Café spent weeks analyzing all aspects of the Voss water promotion!
The big picture – While the manager of Summerland Beach Café was obviously trying to educate customers about the drought… I think the big picture of environmental impact surely favors using the local tap water (thus saving diesel fuel, carbon emissions & packaging).
One container ship pollutes more than 50 million cars – this finding makes me think about all of the products we import from around the world… and the unbelievable amounts of sulfur spewing from the ship’s smokestacks. Wow!
The $185M of bottled waters that are shipped to the USA each year are an environmental disaster. And I will never drink them again.
Practice Critical Thinking – While obviously a labor of love to chase down all this data… I’m happy that I didn’t take the Voss promotion at face value. I think it’s important to think more deeply about information presented to us and to challenge assumptions.
9,697 miles is a LONG way to travel to save our drought – Surely we can find more local/sustainable answers.

This essay originally published on October 13, 2017.