Ethos Water is an American brand of

bottled water Bottled water is drinking water (e.g., Water well, well water, distilled water, Reverse osmosis, reverse osmosis water, mineral water, or Spring (hydrology), spring water) packaged in Plastic bottle, plastic or Glass bottle, glass water bott ...

with a social mission of "helping children get clean water." A

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational List of coffeehouse chains, chain of coffeehouses and Starbucks Reserve, roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gor ...

subsidiary, Ethos began in 2001 when Peter Thum had the idea after working in communities in South Africa that lacked access to clean water. Thum, who was working as consultant for

McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Company (informally McKinsey or McK) is an American multinational strategy and management consulting firm that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. Founded in 1926 by James O. McKinse ...

at the time, realized the potential to create a bottled water brand to raise awareness and funding for safe water programs. The idea became an obsession for Thum, and he wrote the business plan for Ethos, left McKinsey, and moved to New York in early 2002 to start the venture. Starbucks Ethos water

Thum recruited his business school classmate Jonathan Greenblatt to join Ethos in late 2002. They launched operations as a bottled water company in August 2003, and also formed an organization called "Ethos International" to invest funds from the business in safe water programs. Since only $0.05-0.10 of the retail price ($1.80) goes to charity, the Ethos brand is primarily commercial and therefore a for-profit organization. Nevertheless, as of at least 2009, Ethos, through the Starbucks Foundation, had granted more than $6 million, according to the company, to help support water, sanitation and hygiene education programs. Ethos water is manufactured by

PepsiCo PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase, New York, Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the f ...

and Safeway's Lucerne brand, but unlike other Pepsi products, Ethos bottles do not contain

recycled plastic Plastic recycling is the processing of plastic waste into other products. Recycling can reduce dependence on landfills, conserve resources and protect the environment from plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling rates lag beh ...

. In 2005, Starbucks purchased the company for $8 million.

Criticism

Starbucks was criticized in 2015 for sourcing their Ethos water from California during the

drought A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, ...

. The company had been drawing water from two areas described by the US National Drought Mitigation Center as being in “exceptional drought”. In May 2015, the company moved production to Pennsylvania and sourced its water from Naturalle Springs located in Greeneville, Tennessee. Currently, Premium Waters, Inc. bottles Ethos Water from the Lafayette Spring in Lafayette Township.

References

External links

* {{PepsiCo Bottled water brands Starbucks 2005 mergers and acquisitions