Take back the tap

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Take back the tap: Let's put and end to the big business fraud of bottled water

Corporations like Nestlé are wasting your money, and not just Nestlé. All bottled water is a scam and to a great extent the water actually comes from the same source that you have in the kitchen, the faucet, the tap. At times it may have been filtered to remove chlorine and the taste of it but it is still nothing but tap water and you pay hundreds of times as much for a bottle than you would if you fill up your own at home.

Industry marketing from corporations like Nestlé, and others, means that more people are buying bottled water than ever – even though about 64 percent of the bottled water comes from municipal water systems. That means that people buying bottled water are paying much, much more than they would for that same water from the tap. Bottled water is literally more expensive than gasoline – and about 2,000 times more expensive than tap water.

Bottled water companies profit from misleading advertising. People and the environment lose and this advertisement targets people of color, women, mothers, children and lower-income groups.

Industry marketing strategies designed to promote the safety of bottled water to people who historically lack access to safe tap water (especially recent immigrants) prey upon those who may mistrust tap water and communities concerned about obesity and sugary beverages.

The truth, however, is that tap water, generally, is more rigorously tested for safety than is any kind of bottled water and many of the bottled water that is marketed as “spring water” actually sprung forth from the same source as the water in your kitchen, namely the tap.

While it has to be said that in some areas in the USA, one of the richest countries in the world, the municipal water is not very good (and also not very safe when one considers some areas) but in general tap water is safe and a great deal cheaper – and safer – than bottled water.

The abstraction of water for bottling, often from municipal sources, prior to going into the general consumer stream, put a great strain on often already overstretched water resources and in some places, where the abstraction happens from aquifers, it puts water for people, animals and crops at risk but still Nestlé even is permitted to abstract water in times of drought in places such as California. They would otherwise sue the state for damages. Industry comes always first in capitalism.

Companies such as Nestlé also greatly benefit from public disinvestment in water infrastructure, as the chairman of Nestlé Waters stated in 2009: “We believe tap infrastructure in the US will continue to decline. People will turn to filtration and bottled water for pure water needs.” Well, that is definitely what they hope, aided and abetted by the senators and other politicians that they have paid off.

According to the CEO of Nestlé in a statement some years ago water is not and should not be a human right but should be for the corporations to make profits from. That is how callous those capitalists are. Every bit of Nature and human need is there only for their exploitation and profit.

On the water from we can fight them by refusing to fall for their tricks and filling up our own reusable water bottles at home – and at refilling stations, where they exist, and more and more are coming “on stream” – and thus not giving them our hard-earned money and making them rich.

Then we must demand from the powers-that-be in our countries, powers that often better would not be – that water infrastructure, including waste water, as much as other utilities, are taken (back) into public ownership and if that means outright expropriation. Vital utilities and services such as water, energy, health, transportation, and many more, should never be in the hands of private business, but in the hands of the people as a whole, either as co-operatives or in the hands of the state.

© 2018

Nestlé is draining Pakistan to sell us bottled water

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Nestlé is draining developing countries to produce its bottled water, destroying countries’ natural resources before forcing its people to buy their own water back.

Now it is happening in Pakistan. Groundwater levels are plummeting, families are being driven into poverty, and whole areas are being rendered uninhabitable.

But we still have got time to help before Pakistan's water supply is completely tapped out – and if we show Nestlé its heartless policies are sparking a global backlash, we can stop it from decimating more of our natural resources.

But in this context we must also remember the words of the former CEO of the company stating that, as far as he and his company are concerned access to water is not a human right and that water is but a commodity to be exploited.

Until we all wake up and refuse top buy bottled water then those companies, and not just Nestlé, will continue to do as they do. The answer is a simple one: switch to tap water and leave the bottled, whether plastic or glass, behind.

As said, Nestlé is but one of the bottled water companies that are responsible for decimating the groundwater supply in many places. While Nestlé is now doing it in Pakistan Coca Cola has been doing it, and probably still is doing it, in India and those two companies also fill their bottles with tap water and then sell it to us at a horrendously inflated price. Each company has a brand of bottled water where with at least one of them it states – in very small print – on the label that the water comes from “municipal sources”, in other words, it is tap water.

Who in their right mind is going to buy a bottle of tap water at the rate of $1.50 per liter when from the tap it is almost free? Alas, it would seem that many people do believing, as they do not bother to read the label or want to understand the truth, that this water is better for them and safer, because it is bottled water, that the water that comes from the faucet.

Every one of us can take a stand and by doing so change what is happening by refusing to buy water in bottles and fill up reusable bottles from the faucet. Just don't reuse the PET bottles in which bottled water comes. Get a proper reusable bottle of a BPA free plastic, stainless steel or glass. But make the change for the sake of your finances and the Planet.

© 2013