
Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For - yawz
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for%20%20https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for
======
rhino369
Water should have a cost when it is scarce, but water isn't scarce in
Michigan. It should be free. Complaining about bottling water in Michigan is
like complaining about a company compressing air.

The idea that public rights shouldn't be sold on the private market is lunacy.
Nestle selling me a S. Pelagrino bottle doesn't impact an African kid getting
water even a little bit. It's like arguing we should ban farming because
nobody should starve.

edit:should be nearly free

~~~
andrepd
No.

That is a completely backwards way to see things. Consider this: Flint, MI had
a widely publicized water crisis due to cost cutting in water treatment and
supply. Due to these cost saving measures, over 10,000 children got exposed to
high levels of lead. Again, I repeat: this was due to cost saving measures
from a financially bankrupt city/state. At the same time this happens,
companies are allowed to generate _millions_ in profits from these very same
resources?

You say Nestlé selling you bottled water doesn't impact "an African kid
getting water", well excuse me but it very well does. If the state charged a
fair price for the water, fair in light of the obscene profit they are set to
make from processing that water, then those millions in revenue could be used,
oh I don't know, to properly treat water so tens of thousands of children
don't get poisoned, maybe.

~~~
jandrese
I don't see how the Flint Water Crisis is connected to Nestle. That was a
political decision from the government reeling from the fallout of the loss of
US car manufacturing in the area. The company wasn't stealing the town's water
as far as I know.

~~~
maxsilver
> I don't see how the Flint Water Crisis is connected to Nestle.

Part of the reason municipalities are short on money for their water systems,
is that companies get the same water (or at least, from the same watershed)
for free.

Is it so wrong to ask Nestle to at least pay the same rate you and I and every
other citizen pays for water? Why can't they pay municipal rates for municipal
water, like Coca-Cola and all the beer breweries do.

~~~
notyourday
> Is it so wrong to ask Nestle to at least pay the same rate you and I and
> every other citizen pays for water? Why can't they pay municipal rates for
> municipal water, like Coca-Cola and all the beer breweries do.

Yes, it is unreasonable, unless Nestle taps into municipal supply like all
other municipal customers.

~~~
andrepd
It's absolutely fascinating to me how corporations can have so many tireless
defenders of their rights.

I wonder if you would feel as strongly about citizens being poisoned as you do
about corporations being made to reasonably compensate the state for the
natural resources they use to line their pockets.

~~~
notyourday
> It's absolutely fascinating to me how corporations can have so many tireless
> defenders of their rights.

This specific corporation happen not to be a customer of a municipal water
system, which means that that this specific municipal water system does not
get to charge it.

Let me convert it into a non-abstract thing - I'm going to make an educated
guess that you drink either coffee or tea. Why are you not paying for coffee
or tea that you got from a place A to a municipal cafeteria that exists in the
place A municipality even though you are not getting your coffee or tea there?

> I wonder if you would feel as strongly about citizens being poisoned as you
> do about corporations being made to reasonably compensate the state for the
> natural resources they use to line their pockets.

The citizens were being poisoned because the _democratically elected, pro
people, anti-corporation government_ decided that people of Flint, MI, did not
need super clean water that much.

------
toephu2
San Francisco Bay Area tap water is safe to drink and is held to a lot higher
safety standard than bottled water. Also the source of most bottled-water is
no different than the source for tap. Bottled-water is often priced at a
2000%+ markup.

[http://sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=447](http://sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=447)

[https://www.quora.com/Is-San-Francisco-city-tap-water-
safe-t...](https://www.quora.com/Is-San-Francisco-city-tap-water-safe-to-
drink)

~~~
bradlys
Sure. Safe to drink but most Bay Area water tastes damn awful.

I can’t stand drinking tap water in the Bay unless it is ice cold.

Some bottled water tastes bad too. Getting the stuff that isn’t bottled
anywhere near california always seems to taste better.

I use a 6 stage water filtration system and it is a life saver. I didn’t drink
water regularly at all in the Bay until I had that. Still don’t drink much
water at most restaurants here...

I’m not a defender of bottled water but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking
that all bottled water is equal to tap water. Especially SF tap water. It
definitely isn’t. Some actually tastes decent.

~~~
baddox
I drink several cups of water per day straight out of the tap in San
Francisco, and have done so for about 6 years. It tastes fine to me, which is
to say it doesn’t taste like anything. I also have a water filter and pitcher
that I keep in my fridge, and while ice cold water is certainly nicer, it’s
rarely worth the trouble for me to refill it. I’m curious why you think the
water tastes bad straight from the tap, and even more curious if you would be
able the distinguish it from your preferred water source in a blind taste
test.

~~~
hueving
Have you ever had water from anywhere else? The minerals in the bay area water
or whatever the chemical difference is makes it awful compared to tap water
elsewhere.

>even more curious if you would be able the distinguish it from your preferred
water source in a blind taste test.

Of course you would. Tap water isn't purified in any regard to only contain
hydrogen and oxygen. It's filled with all kinds of other crap with just
certain crap removed.

~~~
baddox
I grew up with well water from the Midwest, which oddly enough is claimed by
many to be very tasty _because_ of its mineral content (but bad for pipes and
appliances). I’ve also heard people say that distilled water actually tastes
bad or uncomfortable precisely because it is very nearly just hydrogen and
oxygen. I’m still skeptical that there’s any difference that could be
discerned in a blind test.

~~~
sf_rob
"Minerals" is a blanket category. That's like saying that you'll like flour
water because you like sugar water because they're both fall into the category
of carbs.

------
aurelium
The plant locations should probably tighten up their water laws so that
they're getting at least something back from Nestle, but the real wrongdoers
in this scheme might be the consumers ...

There's a worrying number of people in the world living in places with
perfectly potable water, but who insist on drinking only environmentally-
damaging bottled water through some superstitious belief that it's better for
them.

If Nestle didn't have such a lucrative market to fleece, Nestle's profits
would be far less impressive.

~~~
Chathamization
> There's a worrying number of people in the world living in places with
> perfectly potable water, but who insist on drinking only environmentally-
> damaging bottled water through some superstitious belief that it's better
> for them.

It always seems odd that bottled water gets trashed a lot more than bottled
soda, when soda is both worse for the consumer's health, and probably has a
higher environmental footprint (since it's not just the water, but the water
plus whatever sweeteners and chemicals get added).

True, soda doesn't taste the same as tap water, but bottled water doesn't
taste the same as tap water a lot of the time, either. Some people also prefer
the convenience of buying a bottle of water, and it would seem strange to say:
"Hey, it's fine to buy something in the bottle if you're doing so for the
flavor, but if you're doing so for the sake of convenience, that's terrible."

~~~
Johnny555
If every house had a Coke faucet that could supply limitless supplies of soda
nearly free, your argument might be more appropriate.

You'll find plenty of people arguing against sodas in threads that talk about
soda, this one, however is about the water, no one is suggesting that soda is
a better alternative.

~~~
Chathamization
You seem to have missed the two reasons I gave for why people may want to buy
bottled water. Yes, people have faucets, but the water coming out of your tap
often tastes different from the water you buy (yes, it might also be coming
out of a tap, but there are many taps across the U.S. with varying taste). And
there are various levels of purification - if people really believe that tap
water is exactly the same as purified water, then home water filters are an
enormous scam. But I've never heard anyone argue that.

Another reason people might buy a bottle of water is because of convenience -
if someone's taking a long drive, for example, it's easier to buy a bottle of
water at a gas station and drink it periodically than pull over every time
they want to drink.

The reason I bring up soda is because there's sometimes less animosity towards
soda than bottled water. Some schools will even ban bottled water, but allow
bottled soda[1] - naturally leading to an increase in the less healthy option.

[1] [http://grist.org/article/plastic-water-bottle-ban-leads-
to-u...](http://grist.org/article/plastic-water-bottle-ban-leads-to-
unexpected-results/)

~~~
Johnny555
When I lived in a house with water that had a weird chlorinated taste, I
bought an under-sink filter that rendered the water tasteless. 3000 gallons
per filter, or around 24,000 bottles worth. Or around a penny per gallon
(including the faucet dispenser.... about a third of that for the filter only)

When I go for a drive, I take a refillable bottle with me, and generally fill
it up at the hotel in the morning. Though I will admit to buying a bottled
water from time to time.

But I don't think that a significant percentage of the 50 billion water
bottles sold every year are going to people that don't have convenient access
to tap water.

~~~
Chathamization
I guess this is what I don't understand. Whenever this comes up, people
usually act as if bottled water is no different than what comes out of
people's taps. As the conversation goes on, though, people start talking about
the filtration systems they've bought, or about having the water tested.

If we all know that tap water in many cases isn't the equivalent of filtered
water, or that tap water can vary from location to location, why do these
conversation invariably always start by pretending that there's no difference
between bottled water and water straight from someone's tap?

~~~
Johnny555
I live in the SF Bay area now and use no filter and the water is fine.

My parents have a well and when they were concerned with their water they
subscribed to a water delivery service that dropped off reusable 5 gallon
bottles every couple weeks that is still orders of magnitude better than
individual bottles. (Each 5 gallon bottle replaces 40 16 oz bottles and is
refilled)

One of their neighbors installed a big (200 gallon?) water tank and hired a
service to refill it. My parents ultimately ended up installing a filtering
system when it became clear that the well wasn't going to get better. Which
would have been cheaper that the water deliveries long term, but less than 2
years later the city ended up bringing municipal water to their neighborhood.

There are lots of more environmentally friendly alternatives to single serve
bottles.

------
Lazare
Long, long long article, and then:

> Compared with the water needs of agriculture and energy production, the
> bottled water business is barely responsible for a trickle; in Michigan, it
> accounts for less than 1 percent of total water usage

Right. So all this stuff about water shortages, the amount of water being
used, the amount being charged for the water is meaningless. The entire
article is pointless.

(I also loved the way they tried to blame Pakistan's poor infrastructure _on_
Nestlé.)

------
fblp
The facts are scattered throughout the article but here's one of the more
shocking: "In San Bernardino, Calif., Nestlé has long paid the U.S. Forest
Service an annual rate of $524 to extract about 30 million gallons, even
during droughts".

~~~
njarboe
30 million gallons is about 92 acre ft of water. California uses 70 million
acre ft of water per year. Alfalfa in California uses 5.3 million acre
ft/year. So this plant uses 1/10 the amount of water a very small farm would
use. It is hard to imagine it but 30 million gallons is a very small amount of
water. If the article said "In San Bernardino, Calif., Nestlé has long paid
the U.S. Forest Service an annual rate of $524 to extract about 92 acre ft of
water, even during droughts" people would think "That's not much".

~~~
sho
For those like me for whom "acre ft" means absolutely nothing, it's about
5,172Hhds[1]. Just kidding, it's 1,233 cubic metres, so 92 acre feet =~
113,500m³.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead)

~~~
njarboe
It sounds a bit weird but the first large irrigation projects were used for
farming. When you irrigate your fields (measured in acres) to a depth of about
a foot each time, it is the natural unit for large water use. Why switch?

~~~
sho
Who the hell would "irrigate" their fields to a depth of 1 foot? That's not
irrigation, it's a literal flood!

Unless you're growing rice in a paddy I guess?

------
mattmanser
What's the problem?

I buy bottled water as a drink on the go. I'm perfectly happy drinking tap
water that's been bottled. If I've got the choice between a fizzy drink or
water, I usually prefer water, thanks.

When I was a kid in the 80s there used to be public water fountains, now there
aren't. I think we're all a little more germ paranoid these days too, so i
doubt people would even use them if given a choice to buy a bottle of water
for a £1 or use a fountain for free.

I mean the guy argues against himself:

 _Compared with the water needs of agriculture and energy production, the
bottled water business is barely responsible for a trickle; in Michigan, it
accounts for less than 1 percent of total water usage_

The only thing I wish was better was that it wasn't plastic bottles, but I
always recycle them if I can.

~~~
roceasta
I take a jam jar containing tap water when out and about ('preserving jar' in
US I think). Being made of glass it doesn't leach chemicals _plus_ it cleans
conveniently in the dishwasher. It fits fine in a backpack and you can protect
it in a sock if there's a danger of it rolling around, say in the boot of a
car.

------
hkmurakami
Surely they pay some amount for marketing, distribution, inventory,
production, capital equipment investment, etc.

And when we buy bottled water, we aren't _really_ buying water. We're buying
some combination of marketing and convenience.

------
_Codemonkeyism
In Germany I usually drink water from the tap, whenever in the US[1] tap water
is so full of Chlorine I can't get near it. Even more repulsive when Coke
smells heavily of Chlorine.

[1] I only have east and west coast experience

~~~
Dowwie
I grew up drinking the chlorinated tap water of New Jersey. It never tasted
good. Water filtration systems, such as under-sink systems, solve that
problem.

------
gerdesj
"with a footprint about the size of Buckingham Palace"

Not an authorised unit. See: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-
standards-conv...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-
converter.html)

1 Buck Pal area is roughly equal to 3.706 MicroWales, 77,000 sq m, 19 acres or
19 football (soccer) pitches.

------
loeg
Or phrased another way: Consumers are willing to pay billions for nearly free
tap water in bottle form. Why? Beats me.

~~~
sjwright
You're buying convenience in a relatively sterile container, with refrigerated
contents. Physically, that bottle of water is 99% identical to the bottle of
Diet Coke sitting next to it, but the logic of _that_ product is never
questioned.

~~~
cassowary
That's hardly true. People criticise soft drinks all the time.

In any case, the difference between a cake with arsenic and a cake without
arsenic is going to be significantly less than 1%, but I'm going to make my
decision based on that less-than-one-percent.

~~~
Chathamization
> People criticise soft drinks all the time.

For health reasons. They're very rarely criticized for their environmental
impact, when they're impact is almost certainly greater than bottled water
(since they're not just water and a plastic bottle, but water, a plastic
bottle, plus sweeteners and additives).

Some schools have banned bottled waters but allowed bottled soft drinks.

------
winterswift
Interesting to see this brought up again by Businessweek but this is far from
news – Nestlé and PepsiCo were featured in the 2009 documentary _Tapped_ ,
which came to many of the same conclusions, and brought up other potential
health issues with bottled water, such as the use Bisphenol-A (BPA) in bottle
plastics.

------
jgalt212
Facebook/Goggle makes billions bottling information it pays nearly nothing
for.

------
Dowwie
How many people here installed and use an under-sink water filtration system
or full-home system? I've been using them for about 12 years, re-filling
liter-sized nalgene bottles as needed.

For a long time, I've wondered whether a filtration system in every home would
change people's water consumption habits: would people still buy bottled water
despite having superior-quality water available from a tap? As the expression
goes-- You can lead a horse to water but you can't teach it to drink.

------
briantakita
Municipalities would do well to remove sodium fluoride & other industrial by-
products...I mean "health additives"

[http://fluoridealert.org/studies/brain01/](http://fluoridealert.org/studies/brain01/)

[http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/health/fluoride-iq-
neurotoxin-...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/health/fluoride-iq-neurotoxin-
study/index.html)

~~~
macawfish
You wouldn't believe how controversial that is in the U.S. self styled
rationalists will call you a quack for even mentioning fluoride.

Meanwhile, our internal organs are getting nicely calcified like a bright,
shiny american dental association smile.

~~~
nwah1
Arterial calcification is largely reversible with healthy lifestyle, adequate
vitamin K etc.

Unless you are talking about pineal calcification, of which there doesn't seem
to be much in the way of provable negative consequences within normal ranges
and is indeed mostly mentioned by new age psychedelic gurus.

And I'm not sure why we should assume fluoride is the main culprit for any of
this. But sure, there's a dose-response curve for just about everything.

~~~
macawfish
Have you read the Jennifer Luke study? The pineal gland is the only organ in
the brain that is not behind the blood brain barrier. It is responsible for
regulating our circadian rhythm. Melatonin synthesis is a core aspect of our
health.

Jennifer Luke found that in gerbils, high fluoride hastened female sexual
development and was associated with a diminished circadian rhythm.

Even if fluoride levels in water are "fine" (as in "deal with it.") for most
people, its mass medication and there are likely people who are adversely
affected by it. It's absolutely unnecessary.

[http://www.slweb.org/luke-1997.html](http://www.slweb.org/luke-1997.html)

------
dilemma
People aren't paying for the water. They are paying for packaging and
distribution and its worth it. You literally can't refute this.

------
tjpnz
New Zealand has some of the same issues when it comes to access. There's
recently been a massive influx of foreign companies who've been granted
consent to extract near limitless quantities of water from aquifers, giving
back very little to the communities they operate in. Sadly there seems to be
very little political will to change this.

------
dcassiano
I saw the same at my hometown (São Lourenço-MG, Brazil). It's not fresh news
Nestlé doing this.

[https://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/em-guerra-
contra-a...](https://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/em-guerra-contra-a-
nestle-3372.html) (pt-BR)

------
jasonmaydie
I still don't understand why cities are giving out their water for free to
multi-billion dollar companies.

------
macmar
We have the same problem here in Brazil in São Lourenço city, near to São
Paulo. Nestlé has acquired a large aquatic park and now sale the water and
accelerate the process to extract water and with this eliminate the natural
minerals proprieties on the water killing all the ecosystem.

------
abstrct
This is because governing bodies don't want to put a price on water. Yes,
there needs to be another way to ensure Nestle is not taking advantage of
natural resources, but setting a precedent for charging for water isn't a
great option either.

------
walterstucco
There's a BBC series of documentaries called "The Foods that make billions"
that covers this topic.

Episode one is about liquid gold: bottled water.

Nestlé is just one of them, Coca Cola is another one.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w8cll](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w8cll)

------
_Codemonkeyism
I have a bridge to sell you.

~~~
nwah1
That root of that phrase was predicated on people trying to get rich like
bridge owners did in times past, although obviously was used by con artists to
trick people much like email scams now.

But it is very relevant.

Privatization of public access routes is logically equivalent to privatization
of natural resources, and there's no fair way to justify either, there's just
the historical application of violence and subsequent commodification.

But commodification of the commons is approximately as relevant to the concept
of a free market as markets for slaves... which is to say not at all, and
actually contradicts it.

------
dingo_bat
How horrible for a company to make a good profit!

