Clean Up Your Act, Waitrose!
I’m a big fan of the supermarket chain Waitrose, part of the John Lewis Partnership. Nice shops, great stock, generally excellent food. And I love the business model of JLP, where the staff own the company. It really makes a difference.
I wasn’t quite so enthralled that they’ve opened up in Crouch End in the old Woolworths store, as we have an excellent Budgens right next door, with Paxton & Whitfield cheese, Dunns bread, an eager butcher and also generally excellent food. And it appears to be quasi-independent, run by a Mr Thornton. Waitrose will be in direct competition, and poor Budgens may not be strong enough to survive. I prefer independents to chains. But Waitrose is generally a Good Thing.
Then I read that Waitrose fared badly in the WWF’s league table of naughty palm oil users (Sainsbury’s wins with 26 points out of 30, Aldi comes bottom with 0 and Waitrose manage a sickly 8.5). I went into our new Waitrose to scope it out.
On the shelves, with their bare faces hanging out, were 1 litre bottles of water from Fiji for sale at £1.25 a litre.
From fucking Fiji. Is this a joke?
I don’t know what the rainfall is like in Fiji, but I do know that it’s 10,128 miles away from London, where it’s raining steadily at the moment. The furthest distance I can possibly travel from here without starting on my return journey is 12,410 miles.
So someone has decided to bring water 81% of the way around the world and market it in Britain. And Waitrose has decided it would be wise to offer it to Crouch Enders.
Don’t be so bloody stupid, Waitrose. People read the Guardian here. We’re aware of climate change, and food miles. We want to preserve our planet.
And that means not buying products largely made with unsustainable palm oil, and absolutely certainly not paying the air fare for a bottle of fucking water from Fiji.
Why doesn’t Waitrose buy water from Wales? Or Cumbria? We have plenty. We do not need water which has literally been flown halfway round the world, for God’s sake. If you must fly something halfway round the world, why not try mangosteens? We don’t get those in Wales or Cumbria.
Get real. I’m not shopping at Waitrose again until those bottles of water flown all the way from Fiji at who knows what cost to the planet are removed from sale.