5 - Nestle's Response, and Potential Solutions

Nestle's Response: The public responds, and the company replies.

Early on Nestle's Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe stated:
“There are two different opinions on the matter [or water]. The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution.” (source). After receiving a wave of media backlash for the statement Nestle has been trying to take it back ever since.

In an example of how defensive Nestle has been on the issue; in 2008, Florida’s Miami-Dade County ran a radio ad claiming that tap water purer, safer, and cheaper than bottled water, and in response Nestle threatened to sue them. "Nestle’s spokesman Jim McClellan told Miami Herald that the company has never challenged utilities promoting tap water as cheap and safe, but is doing so now because the county has stepped over the line by damaging the reputation of bottled water." (source), and then the CEO and president of Nestle Waters North America, Kim Jeffery, wrote in defense of the bottled water industry “Those who propose bans on bottled water don’t acknowledge that bottled water represents less than one percent of the municipal solid waste that ends up in landfills”. He continued by promoting Nestle's Eco-Shape bottles, arguing they are environmentally friendly because they are "30 percent lighter than most other half-liter bottles" (source).

In 2012 a documentary called Bottled Life was released, criticizing Nestle and analyzing the consequences of it's actions.

Nestle posted a short response on their website, calling the film inaccurate and using a weak argument to prove as much, however Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board of
Directors Nestlé also wrote a response, which argued that Nestle is only using a small percentage of the planet's water, and also wrote as follows:

"Water required for drinking and basic hygiene is without question a human
right; i.e., a minimum of 25 L per day per person, or 1.5% of global water
withdrawal. It is the fundamental responsibility of governments to ensure
that the population is supplied with this amount of water, and it is
unacceptable that today this is still not the case for more than 800 million
people. On the other hand, I am not of the opinion that the other 98.5%
of fresh water used -- including the watering of golf courses and
carwashes -- is a human right. We need to act more respectfully when
dealing with our most precious resource; wasting water will not cease as
long as water has no value. " (source)

Still working to counteract his earlier statement that water is not a human right.

One great example of how Nestle chooses to respond is a YouTube video posted by BreakingTheSet's Abby Martin, an American journalist. Martin starred in a video criticizing Nestle's water practices, and Nestle responded by sending her a private video in return, which she broke apart in this video.

Nestle does care about it's public image, and is doing everything it can to try and make people believe it is an environmentally friendly and sustainable company. On the front page of Nestle's global website there is this image:

Which leads to an article called Nestlé Waters to certify 20 factories with AWS for water stewardship by 2020, which contains ~180 words of fluff on how Nestle has agreed to meet the AWS certification standards for some of it's factories; "The announcement is part of Nestlé Waters’ commitment to continuous improvement of its water stewardship practices, to address shared water challenges and ensure the sustainability of water resources." (source) 

Time and time again Nestle acknowledges that water is an important and declining resource, but continues to minimize it's own part in the decline and instead distract from the issue by promoting other ways it is being environmentally conscious while increasing the amount it extracts year after year.

Potential Solutions: What could Nestle have done better? What are other companies doing?

The most basic solution would be for the Nestle company to cut back their water industry, to limit the amount they are extracting. While this would decrease the supply of water, it would also decrease demand because aquifers would have a chance to naturally refill, and people's wells (especially those in California) would no longer be dried up, allowing them to use their tap water.

There are two issues with this.
This first is that it would still take time for groundwater levels to recover, and in this time when demand stays constant while supply decreases for bottled water prices could possibly increase and for this amount of time people would have even less water to access unless they could afford to continue importing it while waiting for their wells to recharge.
The second is that Nestle is a business, and they would not cut back on one of their top money-makers when demand is so high.


A more plausible solution, though unfortunately not the ultimate solution for environmental sustainability, would be for Nestle to do what other similar industries have done, and relocate their extracting and bottling facilities to areas that are not in frequent risk of droughts. Starbucks did this during the drought in California, moving their Ethos bottling operation from California to Pennsylvania. (source)

But does Nestle plan on doing this?
No, not at all. When Starbucks announced this Nestle was asked if they would consider doing the same, (in removing extraction facilities in California,) and a Nestle CEO, Tim Brown, replied "Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would."  (source)

Nestle does have a plan in motion to prevent water waste during bottling operations. In other factories of theirs they're installing "zero water" technology, which is described here:
“We have these cooling towers [for milk] that use water.... Previously, that would have been fresh water that we would’ve drawn out of the municipal supply. Now, we can use our own water that had come previously from the milk. That water, normally, would’ve gone into the waste stream. Now it can be reused or recycled.” (source)
However this makes no mention of using the quantity of saved water to cut down on extraction operations, so it can be assumed that Nestle will simply sell the water it doesn't use in factory operations, rather than actually using less.

This is an example of how Nestle is a master of green-washing ("to make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is" (source)), and for the time being, this is their strategy for a "solution".



Sources:
Confino, Jo. “Nestlé's Peter Brabeck: Our Attitude towards Water Needs to Change.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Feb. 2013, www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nestle-peter-brabeck-attitude-water-change-stewardship.
“Definition of ‘Greenwash’ - English Dictionary.” Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/greenwash.
Mohan, Geoffrey. “Nestle Drawing Millions of Gallons of California Water on Expired Permit, Suit Claims.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct. 2015, www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nestle-water-lawsuit-20151013-story.html.
Nastu, Paul. “Nestle Waters' CEO Counters Bottled Water Criticism.” Environmental Leader, 5 Sept. 2007, www.environmentalleader.com/2007/09/nestle-waters-ceo-counters-bottled-water-criticism/.
Nastu, Paul. “Nestle Waters Threatens To Sue Miami-Dade Over Water Ads.” Environmental Leader, 17 Oct. 2009, www.environmentalleader.com/2008/10/nestle-waters-threatens-to-sue-miami-dade-over-water-ads/.
“Nestlé Faces Backlash Over Collecting Water From Drought-Stricken Southern California.” CBS Los Angeles, 9 May 2017, losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/05/09/nestle-waters-backlash-california-drought/.
“Nestlé Responds to Abby | Corporate Troll Spotting.” YouTube, Breakingtheset, 25 June 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxf9UtltFuY.
“Nestlé Waters to Certify 20 Factories with AWS for Water Stewardship by 2020.” Nestle.com, 25 Oct. 2017, www.nestle.com/media/news/nestle-waters-factories-alliance-for-water-stewardship#.
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Peter. “Documentary Film ‘Bottled Life’ Message of Mr. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board of Directors Nestlé S.A.” Aug. 2013, www.nestle-waters.com/Documents/Bottled_Life_EN_August_2013.pdf.
Radio, Southern California Public. “Nestlé Waters CEO Isn't Stopping Bottling in California, Says New Tech Will Save Millions of Gallons.” Southern California Public Radio, 18 Nov. 2016, www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2015/05/13/42830/nestl-waters-ceo-isnt-stopping-bottling-in-califor/.
“Starbucks to Move Ethos Bottled Water Operations out of Drought-Stricken California.” Inhabitat Green Design Innovation Architecture Green Building, 11 May 2015, inhabitat.com/starbucks-to-move-ethos-bottled-water-operations-out-of-drought-stricken-california/.
“Water.” Nestle.com, Nestle, 2017, www.nestle.com/investors/annual-report/water.
“What Do You Think about the Bottled Life Documentary?” Nestle.com, Nestle, www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/water/answers/water-business-bottled-life-documentary.
“Why Nestle Is One of the Most Hated Companies in the World.” ZME Science, 19 May 2017, www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-children/.