A bottled water company has donated $750 million to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) last week according to an announcement from the university. The donation made by the billionaire couple who are the owners of The Wonderful Company.
This is the second-largest gift ever given to a university. The New York Times reported that Stewart and Lynda Resnick donated the gift. The couple seeks technological solutions to combat climate crises. The gift recognizes the mammoth task that lay ahead to prevent disasters, as a result, the world’s greatest minds will invent a technology to capture carbon and solve plastic pollution challenges in the ocean.
Help Manage The Climate Crisis
Stewart Resnick, chairman and president of The Wonderful Company, in a university press release said:
To manage the climate crisis, we need ‘breakthrough innovations, the kind that will only be possible through significant investment in university research. Science and bold creativity must unite to address the most pressing challenges facing energy, water and sustainability.
The Rednicks’ success and fortune are largely thanks to factors that are contributing to our climate crises.
Their company, The Wonderful Company, includes the brands Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios, and Teleflora. The New York Times reported how all of those businesses get criticized by environmentalists for the outsized usage of water and plastic.
The report highlights that the bottled water industry not only produces a huge amount of plastic waste but also requires a lot of energy to bottle, ship, and distribute. Ironically, many consumers already have safe and clean drinking water running from their taps.
They found The Wonderful Company to be California’s largest consumer of water during the draught according to a Mother Jones investigation.
Solutions To Our Problems
The Rednick couple’s gift to Caltech will mitigate a problematic crisis they helped perpetuate. Hopefully, the research may find sustainable and less water-intensive methods of producing crops or find solutions to the worldwide plastic issues.
“If we had an alternative to plastic we would use it,” said Mr. Resnick, as the New York Times reported. He added that Fiji Water will commit to using 100 percent recycled plastic by 2025.
Caltech will use the money to build a new 75,000 square foot building named the Resnick Sustainability Center. It will serve as the university’s hub for energy and sustainability research.
The money will support the four main research initiatives. These are solar energy, climate science, water resources, and global ecology and biosphere engineering.
Conserve The World
“This research will no doubt change the world, it may even save the world. It’s that profound,” noted Dr. M. Sanjayan, chief executive officer of Conservation International, optimistically in a statement.
“These risks we face because of climate change present daunting challenges. The discoveries, inventions, and innovations this incredible pledge will be transformative,” said Steven Chu, Co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and former Secretary of Energy under President Barack Obama, in a university press release.
