Drought spurs call to conserve aquifer, stop drawing water to bottle and sell.
from Sumofus.org
ONTARIO, July 3, 2013 — More than 140,000 consumers in Canada and across the globe are joining with the global corporate watchdog, SumOfUs.org demanding that Nestlé cut back on water pumping during drought conditions for their operations in Aberfoyle, Ontario.
Currently, Nestlé has a permit through 2017 to take about 1.1 million litres of water per day from Hillsburgh, Ontario for its bottling operations in nearby Aberfoyle — even during drought conditions while there are by-laws on water use for households. The surrounding communities which rely on the aquifer have by-laws to restrict its access to their own water during dry conditions in the summer.
“Nestlé is sucking up water from a Canadian watershed during drought conditions — to bottle and sell it off.”
“Nestlé’s appetite to commodify water and natural remedies is a recurring strategy by a corporation with a pattern of seeking to privatize and profit from traditional knowledge and our natural resources,” explained Angus Wong, Canadian Campaigner for SumOfUs.org. “Nestlé's Chairman and former CEO once infamously declared that ‘access to water should not be a public right,’ and now his company is putting into practice its belief that every resource should be commodified and sold off. Nestlé is sucking up water from a Canadian watershed during drought conditions — to bottle and sell it off.”
Nestlé has been in the news a lot lately for attempting to profit from our natural resources. Last month, more than 220,000 SumOfUs.org supporters signed a petition against Nestlé's effort to patent the fennel flower, a cure-all medicinal remedy for millions of people in impoverished communities across the Middle East and Asia.
Several days after the petition launched, a video emerged showing Nestlé’s Chairman claiming that the idea that water is a human right comes from “extremist” NGOs and that water should have a market value. Nestlé has dealt with NGOs and lost before — the years-long boycott over Nestlé's dirty tactics to get mothers to stop breastfeeding and use baby formula, which resulted in thousands of infant deaths from water-born illnesses — was a historic success in corporate campaigning.
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