Charity: Water
Photo from Charity Global
I’m feeling ambivalent about Charity: Water. On the one hand, it’s helping draw attention to the fact that 1 billion people lack access to a safe supply of drinking water. On the other, it’s a $20 disposable bottle of water that, price aside, is going to contribute to just another embattled facet of the environmental-justice equation: landfill problems. (The non-profit is likely hedging its bets on our first-world lust for exclusivity with that price tag. WWOD?1)
Unlike Ethos Water, however, where only 5 cents out of the $1.80 you pay per bottle actually goes to “helping children get clean water”—and leaving Starbucks coffers more than 20 times its much-hyped financial bestowment—Charity Global says 100 percent of your donation goes to fund clean-water-well projects in Africa. Each $20 donation provides one person with clean and safe drinking water for 15 years, it says.
To the non-profit’s credit, it won’t ship single bottles via its Web site. (You’ll have to purchase crates of 24 bottles for a cool $480.) You can also buy a “virtual bottle,” meaning you pay the 20 smackers but you don’t get to tote around the minimalist-chic bottle and flash your largesse to poor, ignorant plebs. Or you can make a direction donation and not appear tragically and insufferably bourgeois.
As cause-related marketing goes, Charity Global at least appears somewhat sincere. But, as I’ve said so before, if you want to give, simply give. Don’t merely buy something you don’t need under the guise of “doing charity.” It’s disingenuous, at best. And, nine times out of 10, it doesn’t do a dollop of good.
1What Would Orlando Drink?
Related articles:
1. The Truth About Bottled Water
2. World Water Day
3. Must be Something in the Water
Mark said,
February 24, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Well, in NYC those are recycled, so at least they wont end up in a landfll.
Melanie said,
February 26, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Good Afternoon - I read your blog almost daily and love it! One question - What is the reference “1What Would Orlando Drink?” mean?
The Worsted Witch » World Water Day 2007 said,
March 22, 2007 at 1:47 pm
[...] Related articles: 1. Charity: Water 2. On the (New York) Waterfront [...]