Is nestle the most evil corporation in the world?
All over the world, Nestle has been draining the water from financially beleaguered regions.
The technique Nestlé uses is this: Find an economically weak region, buy up the land surrounding the water source and grease the political wheels by making a proposal the residents can’t possibly refuse. How can depressed regions resist new jobs and added local revenue? But, the revenue generated by these regions natural resource by and large goes to a corporation headquartered in Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Just so that’s clear, they find places that are already struggling with poverty.Then, they make the poverty worse by damaging watersheds and wetlands, siphoning off hundreds of millions of gallons annually, and leaving the fields barren and dry. This isn’t something that is just happening in Third World countries.They’ve done it in our own backyards.
The small Canadian town of Hillsburgh, Ontario is Nestlé’s most recent target. Nestlé has permission to take 1.1 million liters of water per day from Hillsburgh’s aquifers, even during droughts. Initially, the province had set limits on the company’s ability to withdraw that amount during drought conditions, but after “negotiations” the Ministry of the Environment capitulated to Nestlé’s demands that their water pumping not be restricted. Meanwhile, residents of the town are held to usage restrictions, as their grass turns brown and their gardens die.
“Under its current permit, Nestlé pays $3.71 for every million litres of water it pumps from the local watershed, which it then packages in single-use plastic bottles and sells back to the public for as much as $2 million,” the Council says.
This is a mark-up of 53,908,255%!!!
The Chairman of the Board of Directors at Nestle said “water is a foodstuff like any other and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value.”
This sounds absolutely insane, but check this out: Many western states in the US have already long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater in barrels on their own property because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else!
And as if having our water supplies bought up by this devil corporation isn’t wicked enough, our precious water is also being endangered by our current provincial governmental and corporate lust to begin hydro-fracking and is agitating to run an oil tar sands pipeline across the province. Fracking uses billions of gallons of water per operation to release the natural gas as it contaminates wells and aquifers, and pipeline spills will end up in our water.
If you want to be part of the revolution to change the world, vote with your pocketbook and boycott Nestle!
(We have posted a list of Nestle products on our Blackfly Facebook page.)
Stephanie Kelley
When people purchase bottled water, they are supporting the concept that water is a commodity, not a right. Something to think about.
