Zurich — Evian aims to become the first major spring water brand to go carbon neutral amid criticism that packaging water from the French Alps and transporting it around the world in plastic bottles causes unnecessary environmental damage. Danone, the brand’s owner, is spending €280m on the project, said CEO Emmanuel Faber, who reinaugurated the Evian factory on Tuesday. The site itself is now carbon neutral and is fully powered by renewable sources. Danone aims to offset the pollution caused by transporting Evian water by 2020 as it expands rail transport and promotes biogas. "I’m aware, and more and more consumers are aware, that transporting water is not ideally what you’d like to do," Faber said in an interview. "If you want to build a model that’s sustainable, you need to deal with this reality." Danone plans to start advertising the carbon-neutral efforts on Evian bottles in the US in 2018, according to the brand’s head, Veronique Penchienati. A few smaller producers such as I...
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