Essay On Fiji Water And Corporate Social Responsibility

Many firms are learning that being environmentally friendly and sustainable has numerous benefits. (O.C Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2015). This could enable them to increase goodwill from various stakeholders and also save money in the long term. This will mean that they are being more efficient and less wasteful of resources, which will enable them to be more competitive by satisfying stakeholders. The CEO of

or so many years our society has been thinking of forming new creative and innovative businesses, which would be more environmental and customer friendly. Nowadays a large number of different companies follow the social, ethical, as well as moral consequences when it comes to their decision making. One of the relatively new concepts involving economic and social concerns is Corporate Social Responsibility. Many of us apply this approach not only at work, but also in everyday life without even recognizing.

Firstly, I would like to explain what Corporate Social Responsibility is. “It is a company’s sense of responsibility towards the community and environment (both ecological and

argued that bottled water is “morally unacceptable” – the discomforting fact while having perfectly good tap water, the UK spends almost $2 billion pounds on bottled water, “its treated as a luxury bauble while others die from its absence”. The Fiji Water Company, LLC provides some water to surrounding villages after cyclones and flash flooding, it also provides some funding towards clean water projects across the islands, but the company is not responsible for the islander’s water supply (Heap, 2008). Fiji Water’s good works are more hope than reality. Two years after a riot at the water plant, the Vatukaloko Trust Fund was created, a charity targeting several villages surrounding the plant, agreed to donate .15 percent of its Fijian operation’s revenues, a company official testified that the total was about $100,000 in 2007 (for perspective, the trade journal Brandweek put Fiji Water’s marketing budget at $10 million in 2008) (Lenzer, 2009). The aforementioned presents an ethical issue with Fiji Water profiting from freshwater pumped from the aquifer, then exported and marketed as a luxury product, meanwhile the people of Fiji are getting sicker in certain cases dying from the lack of it. This can be viewed as controversial and moral contextual issue; under Applied Ethics the normative principles that can be argued are Social Benefit, Principle of Benevolence, and the Principle of Paternalism. Next, an additional concern arises, the

[6] A. J. East, "What is a Carbon Footprint? An overview of definitions and methodologies,"

Sustainability has achieved a more ecological tone in the past few decades in terms of a business model, but it originally derives from the concept that a business is successful due to the interconnected areas of economics, culture and ecology. Sustainability is now becoming a somewhat fad and thus it is understandable that it could be misconstrued by some as a form of “greenwashing”. Greenwashing is the idea that a company markets their “green” or environmentally friendly changes in policy and values, despite no actual concrete changes in these areas, for example some argue that Fiji Water greenwasher in terms of their marketing as an environmentally friendly water company despite their little effort to actually go carbon-neutral. Many companies are seeing the

Corporate Social Responsibility are actions taken by a corporation that have positive and lasting impact for all stakeholders associated with the organization, seeking to strike a balance between profits and helping to establish lasting investment in the community (Carrol, 2015). In the 1980’s, then President Reagan challenged the business community to take on more responsibility to address social problems (Carrol, 2015). Socially responsible actions can benefit local communities as well as the greater societal good.

Corporate social responsibility is an organizations’ impact on society that goes beyond what is ethical. Being socially responsibility, an individual in upper management must realize how the actions might be able to influence the rest of the environment. If a company is socially responsible the company is honest, trustworthy, and display integrity while dealing with others and provides the attention to the stakeholders, build a community by searching for goals that are compatible with and respect individuals and accomplish silent triumphs.

Because carbon footprints are such hot topics in the news these days, it's an ideal topic for this particular paper. As concerns about global warming and potential climate change have continued to evolve the term "carbon footprint" has become ingrained in many people's consciousness. Though the large Fortune 500 companies focus on reduction of their own carbon footprints, individuals can help in their own small way as well.

In 2012, the United States Environmental Protection Agency awarded PepsiCo its prestigious Energy Star “Partner of the Year Award for Sustainable Excellence.” PepsiCo was honored with this award because of the continued effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Even with an increase in products, the company has been able to maintain their carbon footprint. Their goal is to improve energy efficiency by twenty percent and to keep greenhouse gas emissions at a level amount. Some of the ways

FIJI Water also started the campaign “carbon negative”, which claims that they are going to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide released on the products and everything related to their products. “Fiji says it will account for the carbon footprint throughout the entire lifecycle of its

It is reported that nearly three quarters of green house gases are a result of humans burning fossil fuels from nonrenewable energy, cars, and electricity (LaMeaux, 2014). The effects of carbon emission on climate change are having devastating and many irreversible

In this day and age companies have mastered the technique of misleading customers by fabricating false claims about a green product or service that they swear to provide. This insincere display of information is called ‘Greenwashing’, a spin-off of ‘Whitewashing’. Greenwashing could be said to be a global phenomenon and it’s commonly seen in advertisements, on products packing, websites, emails, speeches, and videos (just to name a few). Greenwashing is a thought out process, a planned and typically well designed campaign. There is a wide range of reasons why companies are eager to partake in greenwashing; divert attention for regulatory change, to persuade critics or consumers, expand the company's

One of the leading companies that adopted CSR as a pioneer of ethic is The Body Shop. The company has used CSR as a competitive strategy in order to succeed in business. The shop owner knows what she does best. So, products are developed based on a specific group of customers in order to create a strong brand preferences and unique way with a perception of enormous customer groups, called sustainability ideals. The source of The Body Shop success is to utilize the benefits of CSR by selling products based on natural ingredients, paying a fair price and no testing on animal. According to porter (1985), he claimed that sustainability of differentiation depends on two things: "it is continued perceived value to buyers and the lack of competitor ability to imitate it" (Porter 1985 cited in Mallin 2009, p.71). It requires a transparency of work process with stakeholders. From this example, it explains why CSR is important to modern businesses like The Body Shop (Mallin 2009, pp.59-78),(Kwapong 2005, p.89).

One major problem as far as companies using green marketing and why it isn’t working is that the relatively vague definition of green marketing leaves a lot of room for loopholes. Green marketing, by simply being defined as “the marketing of products that are assumed to be environmentally safe,” allows companies to take advantage of this idea even if their products are not the best example of green ones (McClendon 1). Most companies also don’t practice what they preach in such