Green Edge 7 - Bottled Water and the Fiji Flap

8/29/08 (HuffPost) Green Edge 7 - Bottled Water and the Fiji Flap. The Fiji flap is a surreal poster-child for the global trafficking in bottled water. Ten local bottlers (#1 is Fiji Water) fill Chinese-manufactured bottles with Fijian well-water and ship them to the United States, which has an abundance of clean water. The Fijian government has watched as its artesian wells are drained while many of its citizens lack access to clean water. This summer the government imposed an export tax of 20 cents/liter. The bottlers all shut down. As last week's World Water Week conference in Stockholm breaks up, in this post I try to make some sense of the bottled-water industry: (1) How did we get to Fiji? (2) Are the bottler brands being responsible? (3) What should consumers, and voters, do about the issue? More.