Clara Sieg found inspiration in birds. A venture capitalist with a history of backing consumer-facing brands, Sieg had been increasingly concerned with the consequences of drinking polluted water. So last year she founded a “perfectly pure” bottled water brand—one that draws water from a spring; purifies it to filter out microplastics, forever chemicals, lead, pesticides, and other contaminants; and sells it in slim glass bottles that are entirely polymer-free but for the thin lining inside their aluminum twist tops. She named her company Loonen because, she likes to explain, the presence of a loon serves as a signal that a lake ecosystem is healthy.
In looking to avian welfare as a bellwether for human wellness, Sieg is following in the great tradition of Rachel Carson, whose landmark 1962 book Silent Spring raised the alarm about petrochemical-based pesticides by highlighting their role in the decline of robins, warblers, swallows, and, pointedly, bald eagles, an emblem of American freedom and ferocity. “Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of birds, and the early mornings, once filled with the beauty of bird song, are strangely silent,” Carson wrote in an oft-quoted passage.
But that’s where the similarities end. Carson’s poetic lament had such great emotional resonance that it led to the banning of the pesticide DDT and newfound public awareness about the importance of environmental protection. Sieg, though she speaks confidently about regulation of forever chemicals on wellness podcasts, is focused on moving cases of her prestige water brand. On Amazon, a pack of six 750 mL Loonen bottles—each equivalent to three 8-ounce glasses—sells for $35.
“We believe Loonen is part of the solution, not the whole solution,” Sieg tells Fast Company. “Water regulation and infrastructure is a big, hard problem, and changing it requires slow, structural work. We are a tiny team, and we are not under any illusion that we will fix the underlying system on our own.” Loonen, she says, is a way to deliver on the need for “practical solutions now.”
Microplastics, forever chemicals, lead: We live in a toxic world, Loonen suggests, and the only timely fix is to buy your way out. The company exemplifies a playbook befitting the current moment, in which consumer anxiety about wellness is at a fever pitch and government oversight of the water we drink and the air we breathe is at a new low. What better way to meet the moment than repackaging what should be a human right into a virtue-signaling luxury brand?
This new consumer model is relatively simple:
Identify an underregulated part of consumers’ lives, where invisible contaminants lurk. Create a “clean” product that reduces consumer exposure to said contaminants. Wrap the product in an aspirational brand. And lastly, disparage your competition as backward and unsafe. If you follow the playbook correctly, you’ll cash in. But often, nothing systemic will change. The dirty truth is that “adding to cart” is far easier, for consumers and for brands, than policy transformation of the kind that Carson’s allies once pursued.
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