The video above has had 1,373 Tweets over the course of its existence. The average number of followers for any given Twitter account is 126. After some multiplication, "The History of Bottled Water" could potentially be seen by 172,998 people. All of which have the option to Retweet this video.
This video's point is clear: Bottled water is a large environmental risk, and bottle water companies are doing nothing about it.
However, the negative affects of bottled water are not directly connected to these companies. That doesn't mean that they lack responsibility in an ethical and environmental sense, but it does mean they are not legally responsible for the problems in water bottles being downcycled (being turned into lower grade plastics that get tossed out anyway), the mountains of plastics bottles thrown out each year, or the large amounts of money people spend on bottled water when tap water comes at a fraction of the cost.
In the business world, these are called Externalities, indirect affects of the functioning of a business or organization. And previously, these externalities were easily ignored or snuffed out (Not all externalities are negative: adding a competing product to the market may drive down prices of that product across the market--a positive for the consumer). However, in a Web 2.0 economy, externalites go from small problems to potential threats to a company's market share.
In an article by Christopher Meyer and Julia Kirby, "Leadership in the Age of Transparency" published in the April 2010 edition of the Harvard Business Review, three main factors are cited for this change: Scale, Sensors, and Sensibilities.
Scale: Many small problems became very large very quickly. For instance, as more water bottles were used, those mountains of plastic grew larger and larger. In a word, they became harder for consumers to ignore or for companies to hide.
That brings us to Sensors: These problems are increasingly harder to hide because information on pollution, campaign finance, or drinking habits are tracked, logged, and published instantly somewhere online. For instance, the EPA makes its statistics readily available for free.
Finally, Sensibilities: Now that consumers and stakeholders have this information, what are they going to do with it? They take action. That is what Meyer and Kirby said: "The effect of instantaneous communications has been a rising sense of global connectedness and responsibility" (42). Sharing information is extraordinarily easy. Coalescing under a single cause for a very specific action is extraordinarily easy. All due to social tools like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.
This means that there is a change in cost. Previously, it cost companies little to hide and ignore externalities. Today, it cost to much. Meyer and Kirby are merely pointing out that businesses have no choice but to internalize externalities. In a word, businesses have to become less institutional and more social. That might explains Dasani's new "Plant Bottle"--made of 30% plant matter. This costs Dasani more then their previous bottle design. I don't now how much environmental impact this is having, but they are addressing an externality through internal policy.
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