Nestle is evil, and has been for many many years. Our household has tried to boycott Nestle and its child-companies (which are legion) since the 1980's due to their infant formula policies in the developing world - bottom line, they encourage poor women to use their infant formula on the cheap, until their breast milk dries up, then rake in the profit. Companies like this are why capitialism should never be unrestrained - because it inevitably becomes evil whenever its only goal is profit. Some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott
Their water usage is also shit, and not just in California, but all over. They're a business that has decided that their bottom line is more important than the lives of the people whom they effect. That's fine, they can do what they want, but I won't buy their stuff (at least not knowingly - they're behind a lot of other brands).
Nestlé bottles around 705 million gallons of California water a year, according to their fact sheet. I don't see any larger figure in critical news coverage or protest sites, some of which don't even bother mentioning numbers. 705,000,000 gallons is about 2164 acre-feet, the unit in which water consumption is measured at the state level. Actually, the unit should be called mega-acre-feet, because no sector bothers to use less than a million of them at a time. 3.8 million acre-feet go to watering lawns. If lawns were distributed equally across the Californian population, Nestlé would be using as much water as 22,000 people watering their lawns. That's about the population of Laguna Beach. But instead of pouring the water onto the ground, Nestlé is sealing it in plastic bottles, distributing it to retail outlets everywhere, and offering it to thirsty customers, giving them the choice of obtaining a cheap, clean, healthy drink. And Nestlé is the villain?
“There are over 1 million Californians who are without safe access to clean water in California today,” said Walker Foley of Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based NGO. In some small, poor California communities facing clean-water crises, residents spend up to 10% of their income on bottled water, the organization says.
To be fair, I also think that all of the people watering their lawns in a drought should be fined. I also think that a state that can't provide 3.8% of its residents with reliable clean water has got some big problems. If they were giving the water away I might consider a change of opinion. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they're evil, i just think they're a company whose choices I don't agree with, so i don't support them - they're not the only company avoid, and they're not special to me.Nestlé is the villain?
You mean they should simply pay for the water they use? I think charging market prices for water is an excellent idea. It would tend to make the price of water higher during a shortage, encouraging conservation and discouraging waste. It would also provide incentive to move water from where it is more abundant to where it is scarce. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.... So we agree that California is an imperfect distributor of water. But as the entity which claims authority over all the water in the state, and collects taxes to pay for water handling and distribution, the state assumes the default "compare to" role. How does Nestlé compare to California? That would be great! I would also admire someone who spends their own money to provide free water to people who desperately need it. We could give them the gold medal and consider the discussion concluded. But surely no one in our selfish, greedy world would do such a thing, so we are stuck with California and Nestlé. So let's examine the choices California and Nestlé make. California takes money from residents, whether they like it or not, and spends that money on water services, whether residents approve of them or not. This is very similar to California's Paid Family Leave program, which I found had questionable benefit for workers, and clearly harmed poor workers. Similarly, thousands of the poorest residents in California had no running water last year. "This year, the state has set aside $19 million to be spent on emergency drinking water." One program installs 2,500-gallon tanks outside homes to hold drinking water. But there is red tape: There is a trust issue as well. Meanwhile, California made it a crime for restaurants to serve an unrequested glass of water, or for people to wash their car too often. Now, the other side. Nestlé spends its own money to source, purify, and bottle water. Nestlé spends its own money determining where water is wanted. Nestlé spends its own money delivering the water to those places and making deals with retailers. Anyone who is not completely satisfied with California's water provision may freely choose to take advantage of the water Nestlé offers for sale. They may also choose to ignore Nestlé's offer, at no cost to themselves. There is little fear that picking up a bottle of Deer Park will result in la migra coming to take away your children. It's easy to complain about Nestlé's "tremendous markup." An activist who wanted to actually help with the problem would compete with Nestlé, undercutting their prices and making life better for water consumers and themselves at the same time. If some households are really spending 10% of their income on bottled water, it shows there is a dire need that the state is not meeting. Nestlé is doing something to meet that need. Can we imagine that these consumers would be better off if Nestlé disappeared? No, but we can entertain another fantasy. A quick search might be in order. Nestlé Waters Canada donates over $60-thousand in bottled water Nestle donates 80,000 litres water to Sindh heat stroke affectees Nestlé Nigeria Donates Water Boreholes To Orile-Imo Community Nestle Pakistan donates 78,000 liters water for flood victims Chennai floods: Companies like Nestle India, ITC donated 150 tonne food items for victims East Porterville gets 100,000 bottles of water Nestlé Pure Life Donates Water To Texas Youth Football Those are from news outlets; Nestlé boasts of millions of bottles of donated water on their site. http://www.nestle-watersna.com/en/csv/community/relief-efforts http://www.nestle-waters.com/creating-shared-value/water-for-health/disaster-reliefI also think that all of the people watering their lawns in a drought should be fined.
a state that can't provide 3.8% of its residents with reliable clean water has got some big problems
If they [Nestlé] were giving the water away I might consider a change of opinion.
they're a company whose choices I don't agree with
Applicants need to prove ownership of the house, open their home to a site assessment, and more—with each step of the process involving a days or weeks long queue. Some 1,300 homes still don't have tanks installed.
When the portable showers were first installed in front of the church, says Lockman, many people suspected they were an immigration enforcement trap. Some parents haven't been sending their children to school, having heard that child welfare services would take away kids from families that don't have running water.
If they [Nestlé] were giving the water away I might consider a change of opinion.