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We Put Pepsi’s Ridiculous New Aquafina Product To The Test

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We cover tech news here at TechCrunch, so I was surprised to see a 5 lb overnight shipment turn up from Pepsi containing three half liter bottles of Aquafina water. The reason for the special delivery? The company is launching a new plastic bottle that contains half the plastic content of the ancient bottles. Less plastic = less landfill weight, less carbon, less terrible stuff in general, they say.

I’m concerned that Pepsi chose to promote its new “eco-friendly” product by proactively shipping, via Fedex overnight, 5 lb boxes of the water to push around the people. And then sending a second batch either in error or to reinforce the message. That’s not very eco-friendly (if anyone knows the carbon cost of sending these boxes, let me know, then multiply it by hundreds or thousands of push). It all seems a small wasteful.

Anyway, after all this carbon spending and the general effort caught up in sending me six bottles of water I never requested, I thought I must at least place the product to the test. I don’t taste bottled water myself, in view of the fact that it’s less safe than tap water and way too expensive (see the clip from Bullshit not more than). But Laguna, my 105 lb chocolate lab, likes bottled water. And she likes to chew on stuff. So we brought her in for a special assignment to test Aquafina’s new Eco-fina water in the TechCrunch Lab. She reluctantly agreed.

First off was the taste test. She doesn’t look particularly enthusiastic in the picture above, but once I ongoing pouring, she was certainly into it. She didn’t even wait for it to hit the bowl:

So Laguna certainly like the taste of Aquafina water (she also eats dirt, and enjoys licking my feet). Next was the durability test. It took her about ten seconds to ruin the bottle, which isn’t excellent. Pepsi removed about half the plastic from the new bottles, and they clearly aren’t vacant to hold up to any kind of sustained attacked from a large, well-toothed canine:

Overall I’d say that Aquafina water is absolutely excellent enough for my dog to taste, and the bottles make fun albeit small-lived chew toys to distract her.

Here’s that clip on just what you get with bottled water, if you’re interested:

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