At the core of Pat's Backcountry™ Beverages resides a guiding principal. It is a philosophy that we take very seriously. So much so that it has come to define our vision and our mission far beyond the context of our technologies.
We believe that the most sustainable and environmentally responsible solution will in time reveal itself to be the most economically solvent solution. We call this eco2nomics. Think of it as capitalistic Darwinism played out through the reality of the limited resource world that we live in.
We share a world of diminishing resources, externalized social, human, and environmental costs, corporate misconduct, and failures of our elected representatives. All of these factors must intrinsically converge to a point of singularity at some undefined time in the future. Long before they do, many of the systems that capitalism currently defines as "efficiencies" of today will begin to falter and fail. The externalized costs upon which they depend will no longer be available for their manipulation.
The global beverage industry exemplifies a non sustainable system whose competitive drive for dominance has lead them further and further from environmentally and socially responsible solutions. These abuses are most vividly portrayed on three enormous levels:
1. Shipping and Transportation
Soda, beer, and other carbonated beverages are primarily water. Take a moment to consider how much fuel is used to transport the hundreds of billions of gallons of carbonated beverages that are mostly made of "water" around the world each year. This is fuel that we depend upon other countries to provide (foreign oil), and once burned leaves nothing but a carbon footprint in its place.
2. Packaging and Solid Waste
Packaging is just another fancy word for "solid waste". When is the last time that the packaging of anything you purchased went anywhere other than the garbage, or preferably the recyclable bin? Whether its aluminum cans, plastic bottles, or glass bottles, they all represent a non-sustainable and antiquated system of delivering water based beverages to consumers. Think about it. We are extracting precious resources to package what is essentially "water".
3. Global Water Crisis
Water is now the third largest industry on earth after oil and electricity. It is becoming increasingly common for beverage corporations to strategically and geographically positioning themselves in order to exploit deep water aquifers that communities and cultures have depend upon for hundreds or thousands of years.
These exploitations typically unfold something like this:
The corporation promises a community that they will create many new jobs if they are allowed to build a factory and use the underground water for their production needs. As the company extracts the water and levels in these aquifers diminish, and the communities loose access to their source of water. Meanwhile, the corporation continues to drain the water for use in the production and manufacturing of their beverages. They are able to do this because they strategically built their wells deeper.
Q: Why do this?
A: Clean water is becoming an increasingly rare (and hence valuable) commodity. Companies that depend upon enormous volumes of water for the production of their products must secure access to this most precious resource to remain competitive, regardless of the resulting cost to humanity.
Q: What happens to the communities that no longer have access to water?
A: They are forced to relocate, or to pay for water. Sadly, once this precious resource has been processed, it becomes "stuck" in its new form (soda, beer, etc) until it has been consumed.
Pat's Vision
Our vision is simple. We want to help bring about the end of packaging carbonated beverages in plastic, glass, or aluminum disposable containers and needlessly burning fuel to ship what is essentially "water". We want to pioneer a global beverage delivery system that works to preserves water in its natural and most valuable state (pure water) until the moment that the consumer chooses to add a concentrate and turn that water into a new form (i.e. soda, or beer). We want to support a system of sustainability in which consumers collectively distribute the burden placed upon access to clean water across the entire earth, rather than a system that focuses that burden destructively upon targeted communities. In short, we want to make available the option of an environmentally, nutritionally, and socially responsible carbonated beverage to conscientious consumers around the world.
The idea for Pat's Backcountry™ Beverages began on a backpacking trip when one guy decided it would be pretty cool to be able to "pack" a concentrated beer with him. But from that day forward the larger reality of that dream has been to challenge the tradition of the global beverage industry by introducing an environmentally and socially responsible alternative to the non sustainable systems that are currently in practice.
Our Future
Every day we cast our vote with the dollars we spend. In the end it is each of us and all of us, as consumers, that will decide the fate and ECOnomic future of the beverage industry, humanity, and our world. Let us decide wisely.
