Selling Our Water to Nestle

British Columbia will finally start charging companies like Nestlé for taking our groundwater and bottling it to sell at a profit. The problem is it will only be charging $2.25. Per million litres.

That’s about one-ten-thousandths of a cent per bottle. When hundreds of thousands of us objected to Nestlé taking 285 million litres of BC’s water for free and selling it around the world, this wasn’t the fix we had in mind.

At a time when water is in short supply globally, it is outrageous that Nestlé can draw limitless amounts of our natural resources to sell for a huge profit. Nestlé's chairman says that "extremist" NGOs are responsible for the idea that water is a human right, and that water should have a market price -- apparently he thinks that the “market price” for him is $2.25.

Tell the BC government to charge a fair price for our most precious resource.

The cruel irony is that the new water legislation is fairly appropriate when it comes to individuals’ water use -- but corporations, once again, get off with paying virtually nothing. If you or I were to bottle enough groundwater to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, we’d pay $180. Nestlé will pay $6.25. That’s bananas.

BC has some of the purest, cleanest and most delicious water in the world -- and Nestlé doesn’t think anything of sucking it out of the ground for a pittance and selling it back to us in a plastic bottle. Nor does the BC government, apparently. This pathetic legislation, which was supposed to fix the problem of freeloading corporations, is even more outrageous at a time when many parts of the world are facing extreme water shortage.

Call on the BC government to stop allowing Nestlé and other corporate freeloaders from extracting our water for next to nothing.

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More information:

Companies will now have to pay for B.C.’s groundwater — but is it enough?,The Province, Feb 5, 2015
B.C. to charge up to $2.25 for bottling 1 million litres of groundwater, Vancouver Sun, Feb 5, 2015