Case Abstract
By 2009, New Zealand businessman and Good Water CEO, Grant Hall, was one year into his five year plan to achieve his nirvana vision of a closed loop system. He wanted to sell water in bottles made from local biomass, with the used bottle waste separated, recycled into plant pottles, allowed to biodegrade to support new plant-life and sources of biomass for further production of water bottles. To make his plan a reality, Good Water and competitors who took up the Good Water project challenge of using plant-based plastic (PLA) bottles for their products, needed to ramp up volume considerably.
Doing so would create demand for a local biomass supply and incentivise the infrastructure needed for separation and recycling of PLA. Meanwhile, there were issues around the desirability of and the need for bottled water, and the resultant creation of a huge amount of plastic waste. Grant had succeeded in bringing together a number of key partners in the Good Water project, but it was not without its problems or detractors. How should Grant develop the Good Water Company and the wider Good Water project?
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