Business Opportunities Weblog

Selling Fake Oil Spill Souvenirs

By on June 30, 2010 in Featured

Jeffrey and David Shiffman are consummate entrepreneurs, attempting to make money off of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They’ve turned their bathtub into a chemistry lab and are making and bottling “Oil Spill Water” to sell on their website oilspillwater.com. Originally, they were using the actual polluted water from the Gulf of Mexico, but shipping was too expensive, so they decided to manufacture their own; hence their need for the bathtub.

The only mention that the water isn’t really from the spill appears at the bottom of the website in a very light font and reads “Oil Spill Water is a novelty gift that is included with your donation.” Selling one thing and pretending it is another is just wrong. I emailed the site’s owners for clarification, but have yet to hear anything either way.

NBC Miami reports that the brothers are sending five dollars of every $9.99 order to Reef Relief, The International Fund for Animal Welfare, and The International Bird Research Center.

disaster niche

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,203 posts to the site.

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  • http://wahm.business-opportunities.biz Angela Shupe

    It is just wrong. There are much better ways to donate than that. If people want to help then they should just send the whole $10 to a reputable organization.

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