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Danielle Batist is an experienced freelance journalist, founder of Journopreneur and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project. She lived and worked all around the globe and covered global and local stories of poverty, exclusion and injustice. Increasingly, she moved beyond ‘problem-reporting’ to include stories about the solutions she found. She witnessed the birth of the new nation of South Sudan and interviewed the Dalai Lama. She reported for Al Jazeera, BBC and the Guardian and regularly advises independent media organisations on innovation and sustainability. She loves bringing stories to the world and finding the appropriate platforms to do so. The transformation of traditional media fascinates rather than scares her. While both the medium and the message are changing, she believes the need for good storytelling remains.
There’s A Heat Wave On. £80 For A Bottle Of Water, Anyone?
When I came across this column by comedian and activist Chris Coltrane, I had to actually look up whether or not what he referred to was a hoax. I had missed the initial news about this earlier in the year, so I was pretty shocked to see the first hit on the search engine was the Harrods website, where the product was advertised for the outrageous sum of £80 (100 USD). You might wonder what the product was: melted ice from the Arctic icebergs. Seriously.
It might have been the 32 degree temperature I was sitting in while reading the piece (there’s a heat wave going on in the UK), but I really couldn’t get over how wrong it was, on all levels.
As London’s most famous luxury goods warehouse, Harrods must have known the PR disaster going on, as they did take part of the product description off their website: "With an exceptionally light mouthfeel, [the brand] has a unique terroir – perfect for pairing with fine foods."
Coltrane had me laughing out loud when he commented: “Any fine food in particular? Nope – any food, as long as it’s fine. And do you know why this food pairs well with literally any food? BECAUSE IT’S WATER.”
The line has now been replaced by the following: “Sourced from Arctic icebergs, Svalbardi's polar water is believed to be the purest and best tasting in the world due to its low mineral content.”
But the next sentence is worse: “Presented in a beautiful glass bottle, and with a limited availability, it would make a unique gift for foodies and adventurers.”
A limited availability. That’s certainly one way to describe a product that is a result of climate change. I found other articles explaining that it was a Norwegian-American Wall Street businessman who came up with the idea after visiting the Arctic and bringing home some melted iceberg as a gift for his wife.
At this stage I was pretty much sweating from both rage and the heat outside, so I closed down the web browser, shook my head, walked to the kitchen and downed two glasses of water. Tap water.
