By Jocelyne Hilary, Staff Writer
Drinking bottled water has become the norm of this generation; everyday millions of bottles of water are consumed on a daily basis. But how much do we really know about the water that we drink? Or where it comes from?
Nestlé’s Pure Life has been a popular brand for bottled water among consumers, but most consumers aren’t aware of what is being done to get the water onto that shelf at the local supermarket. Nestlé owns 70 % of the water brands being sold globally; they sell 10 billion bottles a year. They do this by owning water rights, which is essential in order for them to be able to sell water. Nestlé owning the majority of rights in the US, pump out millions of cubic cm of water annually.
Nestlé has been found guilty of draining local water supplies in order to sell their water to consumers in wealthier countries. This has been affecting a lot of developing countries, it has been destroying the natural resources of these local communities and forces them to buy their own water back which is evidently not fair. Although Nestlé have legally purchased land and water rights, they exploit this by draining more water than they should, and drain water from areas where water is already an expensive commodity such as developing countries.
With the Earth’s population constantly rising, it is easy to forget that water is becoming a limited commodity, and although living in developing countries makes us blind to this, those in developing countries see the adverse effects almost always before anyone else. But Nestlé is not just draining water from developing countries but from within the US too. Residents from McCloud , California had protested a while back, against the company’s plan to extract 500 million gallons annually. More communities started standing up to Nestlé including, Pasco County-Florida, Barnstead-New Hampshire and Fryeburg-Maine.
Nestlé’s recent victim Bhati Dilwan is a small village in Pakistan, where some parts have become completely uninhabitable. In this small village, citizens have witnessed the horror of their water table sinking hundreds of feet below ground. Pakistani children, especially those who are under privileged have reportedly been getting sick as a result of being forced to drink dirty water.
Senior, Nancy Conejo described her shock “ I can’t believe Nestlé is responsible for doing this. This is a huge eye-opener, I always buy bottled water simply due to convenience, I never really paid much attention to the origin of the water I was drinking. I have bought Nestlé Pure Life water before, but this is going to make it rather difficult to convince me to buy their water in the near future. It is quite sad that water is such an accessible commodity here and can be purchased so cheaply, yet the same can’t be said for the locals where the water was taken from to begin with. It’s unfair.”
This company has shown disregard to others needs, in 2000 at The World Water Forum, Nestlé was one of the first water corporations to stand up against water being defined as a right. The current CEO of Nestlé was allegedly caught on tape saying that water “in not a right.”
Biology major, Austin Lannon said “ Water is a right, it is even declared so by the UN. Water is the source of our life. Nestlé is wasting and squandering a resource which isn’t being replenished due to increased pollution and urbanization, just to make a few cents on the dollar.”
Locals and Organizations such as Ecojustice have been fighting Nestlé hoping to make them understand and appreciate the value of water.
