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I don't get this outrage over Nestle bottle water. The amount of water that is bottled for human consumption must be minuscule compared with many other usages l

by huherto 10y ago

I don't get this outrage over Nestle bottle water. The amount of water that is bottled for human consumption must be minuscule compared with many other usages like household, agricultural and industrial. Furthermore, it is not like the water is wasted. It is actual consumed by humans who live not too far from the place where the water was bottled.

mhalle 10y ago
At the risk of continuing off-topic, the "outrage" over Nestle bottled water in this case was due to Nestle starting to draw large amounts of water at about 1/100th the residential water cost from an region under mandatory water restrictions due to drought. Blame Nestle and/or the local government, but it does seem short-sighted and suboptimal. In general, though, bottled water isn't consumed close to its generation point: it's packaged in plastic bottles and trucked away. There's an environmental cost. And many of the bottles that are consumed locally contain the same water people could have gotten straight from the tap, so the environmental cost is lower but more pointless.
- greenshackle2 10y ago
  I agree they should pay the full price, and that bottled water is wasteful, but 4 million litres per day is not a large amount. It's equivalent to the daily consumption of around 8000 people. Or equivalent to the water needed to irrigate a laughably small farm.
  - russum 10y ago
    4,000,000 / 8,000 == 500 liters per day per person?
    - huherto 10y ago
      http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html 600 Gallons per day * 3.7 = 2,271 liters per day. That is just water without counting the water used to grow the food we use. Meanwhile 4,000,000 liters can be benefit 4,000,000 people that drink 1 liter of bottled water a day. Drinking water is as efficient use of water as it is possible. I rather drink from the faucet if possible but lots of people prefer bottle water.
- joelwilliamson 10y ago
  There is no drought in Southern Ontario. They are drawing well water, not residential water. A farmer could draw that much water and pay absolutely nothing.
  - ant6n 10y ago
    Doesn't a farmer feed the water back into the well, in a manner of speaking?
    - verelo 10y ago
      Doesn't a farmer feed us all? That water goes into making products that are likely much better for us than Kit Kats.
      - ant6n 10y ago
        I guess that depends on the farmer...
greenshackle2 10y ago
I'm not saying Nestle isn't evil, but yeah, in terms of water scarcity, they're inconsequential. The real problem for water scarcity, is not overpriced-as-fuck water. It will always be a tiny slice of water use, because it is overpriced as fuck. The problem is water being given away for free or nearly-free for nonessential low-value uses. The consensus solution among water management professionals is full water pricing. > in southern Ontario, bottled water giant Nestlé continues to extract four million litres of groundwater every day Wow! That's like, four billion millilitres! Let's use the smallest unit of measurement we can for maximum outrage. That's like, almost two entire olympic swimming po.. oh.
billmalarky 10y ago
Nestle has tapped into the water supply in developing markets like Pakistan. As a result the water table is lowered (and quality of water drops) so people in the area cannot get access to clean water from local wells, and are forced to purchase Nestle "pure life" water at an insane markup. Scroll down to page 25 and look for: "9. Human Rights Concerns about Nestlé’s ‘Pure Life’" http://www.alliancesud.ch/en/policy/climate/downloads/nestle-pakistan.pdf http://www.alliancesud.ch/en/policy/climate/downloads/nestle... Nestle is not the sole water extractor that is causing this issue, but their business model (extract local water, bottle, mark-up, sell) is unconscionable in _this_ context. They aren't adding value, they are simply taking advantage of a developing country's weak regulatory framework. Their business model (for this particular product) would not be immoral in an environment where access to local water was abundant.

by huherto 10y ago

mhalle 10y ago

At the risk of continuing off-topic, the "outrage" over Nestle bottled water in this case was due to Nestle starting to draw large amounts of water at about 1/100th the residential water cost from an region under mandatory water restrictions due to drought. Blame Nestle and/or the local government, but it does seem short-sighted and suboptimal. In general, though, bottled water isn't consumed close to its generation point: it's packaged in plastic bottles and trucked away. There's an environmental cost. And many of the bottles that are consumed locally contain the same water people could have gotten straight from the tap, so the environmental cost is lower but more pointless.

greenshackle2 10y ago
I agree they should pay the full price, and that bottled water is wasteful, but 4 million litres per day is not a large amount. It's equivalent to the daily consumption of around 8000 people. Or equivalent to the water needed to irrigate a laughably small farm.
- russum 10y ago
  4,000,000 / 8,000 == 500 liters per day per person?
  - huherto 10y ago
    http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html 600 Gallons per day * 3.7 = 2,271 liters per day. That is just water without counting the water used to grow the food we use. Meanwhile 4,000,000 liters can be benefit 4,000,000 people that drink 1 liter of bottled water a day. Drinking water is as efficient use of water as it is possible. I rather drink from the faucet if possible but lots of people prefer bottle water.
joelwilliamson 10y ago
There is no drought in Southern Ontario. They are drawing well water, not residential water. A farmer could draw that much water and pay absolutely nothing.
- ant6n 10y ago
  Doesn't a farmer feed the water back into the well, in a manner of speaking?
  - verelo 10y ago
    Doesn't a farmer feed us all? That water goes into making products that are likely much better for us than Kit Kats.
    - ant6n 10y ago
      I guess that depends on the farmer...

greenshackle2 10y ago

I'm not saying Nestle isn't evil, but yeah, in terms of water scarcity, they're inconsequential. The real problem for water scarcity, is not overpriced-as-fuck water. It will always be a tiny slice of water use, because it is overpriced as fuck. The problem is water being given away for free or nearly-free for nonessential low-value uses. The consensus solution among water management professionals is full water pricing. > in southern Ontario, bottled water giant Nestlé continues to extract four million litres of groundwater every day Wow! That's like, four billion millilitres! Let's use the smallest unit of measurement we can for maximum outrage. That's like, almost two entire olympic swimming po.. oh.

billmalarky 10y ago

Nestle has tapped into the water supply in developing markets like Pakistan. As a result the water table is lowered (and quality of water drops) so people in the area cannot get access to clean water from local wells, and are forced to purchase Nestle "pure life" water at an insane markup. Scroll down to page 25 and look for: "9. Human Rights Concerns about Nestlé’s ‘Pure Life’" http://www.alliancesud.ch/en/policy/climate/downloads/nestle-pakistan.pdf http://www.alliancesud.ch/en/policy/climate/downloads/nestle... Nestle is not the sole water extractor that is causing this issue, but their business model (extract local water, bottle, mark-up, sell) is unconscionable in _this_ context. They aren't adding value, they are simply taking advantage of a developing country's weak regulatory framework. Their business model (for this particular product) would not be immoral in an environment where access to local water was abundant.