Question: Many of us have been inspired to reduce our impact on the environment. Few, however, have gone as far as former reporter and documentary filmmaker Reed Paget. An American journalist covering the launch of the United Nation's Global Compact in 2001, Paget was deeply impressed by this environmental initiative's call to "use capitalism to change the world." What better mechanism is there for change, thought Paget, than business, with its wide financial and entrepreneurial resources and its risk-taking mindset? Although he had no business experience, Paget determined to start a company that would be both socially responsible and environmentally friendly. When he learned from Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that a quarter of the world's people have no access to clean water, he decided to create a bottled water company, both to alert the public to the global water crisis and to show that bottled water could be manufactured and marketed in an environmentally sustainable way.
Finally, Paget determined that all his company's profits would be donated to clean-water projects around the world. With start-up funding from the Idyll Foundation, a team of friends, and a stack of business how-to books, Paget sat down to develop a brand name, find a bottle design, work out a manufacturing deal, and find customers. Coming up with a name that wasn't already trademarked was a challenge, but the team settled on "Belu" (pronounced "belloo") to evoke the color of water and the idea of beauty. A deal with an upscale designer yielded an affordable glass bottle design, and after taste-test visits to more than seventy sources of water in the United Kingdom, Paget settled on a supplier of natural mineral water called Wenlock Water in the Shropshire hills. Not only was the water great; it was more ecologically friendly for a U.K. company than water shipped from the mountains of France, like that of competitors Evian and Highland Springs. A marketing firm helped Belu land its first customer, the popular Waitrose supermarket chain. With additional funding to pay for the initial run of glass bottles, Belu delivered its first order in May 2004.
A website, further funding, and marketing and sales growth, including the addition of the giant grocery chain Tesco, soon followed. Belu, the first bottled water that does not contribute to climate change, began to prove its appeal to consumers. Another breakthrough came when the company found a manufacturer to produce corn-based bottles, which are completely stable on store shelves but biodegrade back to soil in just eight weeks under the right conditions of heat and humidity and with a little help from microorganisms. Now that it has grown well over 550 percent from its founding in 2002, Belu Water reaches more than 500,000 consumers each month and, though a charity called WaterAid, has brought clean water, wells, and hand pumps to over 20,000 people in India and Mali, with expectations of helping at least 10 times that number in future years. It uses clean electricity and offsets its remaining carbon emissions and has won numerous awards, including Social Enterprise of the Year and Social Entrepreneur of the Year (in partnership with Schwab Foundation). For more information about this company, go to http://www .belu.org. 18
1. Belu Water gives all its profits away and bills its product as the first carbon-neutral bottled water and the first to come in corn bottles. Do you think its levels of eco-consciousness and social responsibility set a realistic model of environmental performance for other manufacturing companies? Why or why not?
2. Why does Belu Water produce a saleable product instead of just asking the public to donate money for clean-water projects?
3. Do you agree with Reed Paget that business is ideally suited to "change the world"? Why or why not?