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[GreenYes] ] Re: FYI on Bottled Water: No More Sweetheart Deals for Nestle


Title: [GreenYes] ] Re: FYI on Bottled Water: No More Sweetheart Deals for Nestle

Peter, thanks for sharing your thoughts on water conservation, and how we all should be very conscious of how/if we're using drinking quality water responsibly. Certainly, we, too, should be examine whether we should even use drinking quality water for some of our current uses.  Granted, in all the uses of such water, bottled drinking water represents a volume which may indeed currently be a "drop in the bucket".  Thanks also for outlining the solid waste and energy issues associated with this wasteful practice.

However, the concerns about bottled water go beyond  how much is consumed and what the delivery systems are.   Water itself is being commoditized world wide.  It is yet another resource, like air, which is essential to life, but is being ceded to private companies to use now, to control and profit from, with no incentive to protect this renewable resource for future needs  In some areas of the globe, this is being justified by a developing nation's inabilities to fund the needed infrastructure to deliver tap water, with the cost being more than profits paid to the companies--that is giving up local control and rights to resources. 

And, in certain local areas here in the US, companies like Nestle ARE depleting local water sources while continuing to appeal court rulings requiring them to stop.   Northern Lower Michigan wells are drying due to the rates of withdrawal of "Ice Mountain" water  [BTW, the nearest "mountains" are over 500 miles away] denying local residents and fruit farmers water.  And there are concerns there are major changes beginning in aquatic ecosystems due to the volume loss.   Yes, this is "good drinking water", but the extraction system is not locally sustainable.  If this watershed were being courted for an interboundary transfer to a city in another at such unsustainable levels, it surely would be denied; in this case, Nestle is effecting the same result [albeit much more inefficiently and with much greater environmental impacts] by bottling and trucking the water to Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, etc.......

In addition, while the current total volume of bottled drinking water may not make up the lion's share of all water use, it does represent a large and growing % of the drinking water consumed.   The danger is in this becoming a self-perpetuating phenomenon, whereby people are convinced to buy water for $16/gallon [@$2.00/16 oz] because they are marketed to believe that it is safer than their tap water--even though most sold IS tap water.  Drinkers then come to see tap water as inferior, and come to care less about the sources of their water and what the affects are on it from their other choices i.e. lawn care, household chemicals, energy sources, etc. it...causing its quality to deteriorate over time and consumption to continue to decline...fueling increased demand for "safer" bottled water...

Many organizations such as Corporate Accountability International cited in the email sent, as well as the Sierra Club  http://www.sierraclub.org/committees/cac/water/  have studied the international impacts of this trend.  First and foremost, ensuring that people have access to good water means that they have a basic right to it--from a local, environmental source and not from a $2.00 bottle. 

Stopping the withdrawal of local sources of water for bottling stops the negative impacts of the bottling and distribution you outline; they are after all by products of this process of commodification.

Pete Pasterz

-----Original Message-----
From: GreenYes@no.address [mailto:GreenYes@no.address] On Behalf Of Peter Spendelow
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 3:51 PM
To: GreenYes
Subject: [text][bayes][heur] [GreenYes] Re: FYI on Bottled Water: No More Sweetheart Deals forNestle
Importance: Low


There are lots of reasons to promote the use of tap water over bottled water, such as the energy and environmental costs of making the bottles and the energy costs of transporting full water bottles by truck, but this alert does not address these real issues at all.
Instead, it is claiming that a large company is abusing the public by negotiating deals for obtaining the drinking water to put in its bottles.  It strongly implies that people are losing their access to water because a bottled water company is negotiating sweetheart deals to control access to water.

We need a reality check here.  All the bottled water in the United States is only a tiny, almost microscopic, fraction of the drinking- quality water we use each year.

It is a rare person who drinks more than 64 oz (1/2 gallon) of bottled water each day.  In contrast, just a single toilet flush uses between
1 and 3 gallons of water.  Washing dishes, doing laundry, taking showers - all use multiple times the amount of bottled water that we drink.  That is all inside the house - add in watering lawns, and you multiply our household water use a few more times.  Yet households are a relatively small consumer of water.  By far, most of the fresh water that we as a nation use is used in agriculture.

What I conclude from this is that if you are interested in making sure that the public has good access to water, there are far, far better things you can do to promote water conservation than to go after a bottled water company.  Changing your landscaping to plant drought- tolerant plants, changing your diet to avoid meat, shortening your showers, using water-efficient appliances - all those can have a real effect in conserving water.  If you want to go after companies that use large amounts of water, go after the large agricultural companies, not the bottled water companies.  Even better, take responsibility to minimize those things you do that consume good drinking water.

Peter


On Feb 14, 6:30 am, Pete Pasterz <PAPast...@no.address> wrote:
> ________________________________
>
>         From: activistnetw...@no.address
> [mailto:activistnetw...@no.address]
>         Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 9:21 AM
>         To: Pete Pasterz
>         Subject: [text][html][bayes] No More Sweetheart Deals for
> Nestle
>
>  
> <http://img.getactivehub.com/an2/custom_images/stopcorporateabuse/head
> ...>
> Dear Pete,
>
> No More Sweetheart Deals for Nestlé
>
>  <http://img.getactivehub.com/alert_images/speak_up.gif> Today is a day for sweethearts, not sweetheart deals for the world's largest food and beverage corporation.
>
> Click here to send Nestlé CEO Kim Jeffery a valentine <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/ct/31MrMrS16Rp1/>  asking him to be a dear and stop threatening local democratic control of water.
>
>  <http://img.getactivehub.com/an2/custom_images/stopcorporateabuse/mcwc...> Not only has Nestlé commodified our most precious resource, it has pressured communities into deals that sell off the resource for less than 1/64 of a cent per gallon. They then sell the water back to us for more than $1 per gallon.
>
> If that equation doesn't sit right with you, send Kim Jeffery a tough love valentine <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/ct/31MrMrS16Rp1/> .
>
> For years Nestlé has ignored community concerns - and the environment - when it takes and bottles water for brands like Poland Spring, Deer Park, Ice Mountain and Arrowhead. To get their way they have circumvented local democratic processes and spent millions to green their image - all to secure sweetheart water deals from Maine to Michigan to California.
>
> Communities are suing to put a stop to the corporation's abuses and they could use your help. Nestlé is fighting their efforts tooth and nail.
>
> So if the corporation won't listen to the law or local interests,
> perhaps they will listen to love? Click here to shower Kim Jeffery
> with the 'affection' he needs to be a sweetheart and cease the
> sweetheart deals.
> <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/ct/31MrMrS16Rp1/>
>
> Onward,
>
>  
> <http://img.getactivehub.com/an2/custom_images/stopcorporateabuse/gigi
> ...>
>
> Gigi Kellett
> Think Outside the Bottle Campaign Director
>
>  
> <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/campaign/nestle_no_more_sweethea
> ...>
> Take Action!
> Instructions:
> Click here to take action <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/campaign/nestle_no_more_sweethea...>  on this issue.
>
> Tell-A-Friend:
> Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
>  Tell-a-Friend!
> <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/campaign/nestle_no_more_sweethea
> ...>
>
> What's At Stake:
>
> Nestlé is the largest bottled water corporation in the world, with
> over 70 brands sold in 130 countries. From California to Michigan to
> Maine, Nestlé is interfering in local, democratic decision-making over
> water.  Read more.
> <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/ct/3dMrMrS16Rpq/>
>
> Photo: Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation march against Nestlé's bottling plant in their community.
>
> ________________________________
>
> If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Corporate Accountability International <http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/stopcorporateabuse/join.html?r=1...> .
>
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>
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>
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