It's always blowing my mind that smart/rich people invest time/energy/money in such useless ventures. On one hand everyone knows we're fucking the planet big time with mindless production/consumption, on the other hand you can spend $21.99 on 6L of water, in alu cans ... sweet sweet ""progress"" I guess.
Consider that they are trying to make money, and from that premise, they are not 'useless ventures'.
All food products are commodities: even cola, energy drinks.
Coca Cola, RedBull are by far and away brands more than they are 'good products'.
Evian water sells for 30% more than unbranded water, that's the power of brand.
From a certain perspective, of course it's useless, because it's just branded water obviously, it's in a way offensive to our sensibilities ... but it's smart.
The brand is pretty good. It's a little risky but it almost makes sense.
In restaurants, they charge you more for branded water, and they make you feel like a dolt for drinking 'tap water'. They make a lot of money selling it.
This is the 'bar' equivalent: you can drink 'tap water' like a broke school kid or have a can of 'liquid death' while your bros drink up. Then you don't look like 'sissy' (or choose your own term if that offends the sensibilities). Obviously it's ridiculous, but that's what consumerism is.
I saw this in the news yesterday and immediately flagged it to my marketing friends. It's not a stupid idea.
In a world that's creaking under extreme pressure from climate, species and forest loss, and so on, it's an utterly reckless and stupid idea. That we have to learn to walk away from.
Quite happy to be the uncool kid (a stretch at my age, but hey) drinking tap water, ta. :)
(Making some assumptions from your username ;)
https://oxfordre.com/environmentalscience/view/10.1093/acref...
"However, the tea industry has a high impact on the environment. While being monoculture, it is hub a particular type of fauna, it is ecologically friendly, that is, not harmful to the environment, absorbs greenhouse gases, and supports tea-tourism. However, it also raises certain concerns, including the huge use of pesticides and irrational use of chemical fertilizers."
No idea how it compares to coffee, coke, canned water or anything really, but the conclusion implies it may be one of the least-worst options.
If it turns out tea was worse than other beverage options, yes I would. We've already made significant changes, and expect to make more - from choice and mandated before my time here is done. :)
We all agree it's kind of dumb, pragmatically.
Mostly what I'm trying to do is convey to some commenters here what seems to be a common lack of understanding in tech (maybe a good thing) as to how and why people buy goods and services.
When one understand this, one understands why it's a 'good' business plan.
Also - we - all of us - are woefully unaware of how poignant and powerful all of this is. It works on all of us and 100% of the consumer goods we buy - and even many 'tech goods' are brand and aspirationaly oriented.
Tech is full of ridiculous fads and memes; when I go to tech conferences we play a game of 'count the allbirds' (shoes) as kind of a joke.
But even for actual tech products: Google, FB, Snapchat, Apple (obviously), MS, to some extent Twitter - those are heavy brands, even if they weren't derived from a bunch of marketing people ... 'Do No Evil' ended up being an important lynchpin of Google branding efforts. Way way back in about the year 2000, Google was running ads on NPR and their ethos and manner was presented ultimately as quite different than other tech companies. It was part of their messaging, however authentic.
So - no, I would not want to do this business, I would not want to support it, and I hope I never buy this ridiculous water. But I know my snowboarding brother and his friends will ...
Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order
Drinking bottled water in the UK is insane, we have some of the best water in the world and people spend a pound on something they could get out the tap basically free.
It still boggles my mind that people continue buying water bottles where tap water is totally ok (and in some case, better than bottled water).
Plastic bottles are made from a plastic that can be recycled into carpets and other synthetic materials fairly well. Plastic pollution comes largely from lower grades of plastic (think plastic bags, etc) that break apart into smaller pieces that filter feeders eat
If it's lower grade, is there something better than can be used?
Aw man :(
It's "reduce, reuse, recycle" for a reason, "reduce" has a much bigger impact then "recycle".
Anecdotally: you could argue that a car that drives itself is outlandish, or rentable electric scooters is stupid, or X other idea is ridiculous, but those smart/rich investors are still making money at the end of the day.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-star...
Would you trade one of your lung for a 5$ bill ? No, well that's what we're doing right now.