A letter from Nestlé

By Envision Magazine on March 12, 2014

 

Editor’s Note: After Envision published Part II of Nestlé seeks to develop in Cascade Locks we were contacted by David Palais, Natural Resource Manager for Nestlé Waters North America, who is also quoted in the first installment of the story. Below are his comments in their entirety:

Having read your story published in December (“Nestlé seeks to develop in Cascade Locks, Part II: Nestlé’s history of battling water rights [1]”) regarding Nestlé Waters and our proposed bottling plant in Cascade Locks, I would like to provide some greater context—and facts. Please find more detail on these below.

The statement that Nestlé depletes water resources is inaccurate. Overall, we are a relatively small water user. Nestlé uses just 0.005 percent of global freshwater withdrawals and Nestlé Waters uses just 0.0009 percent—this compared to 70 percent used by the agricultural sector. It is not in our long-term business interests to mismanage the water resources we operate and we are committed to managing these resources in a responsible manner.

The characterizations of Nestlé put forward by the movie “Bottled Life” were one-sided and did not fully cover the challenges all stakeholders face when trying to solve water issues. To give you some context, we were first approached by the Swiss-based makers of“Bottled Life” a few years ago to provide our feedback on various topics linked to our bottled water business. We decided not to participate in the film as we were under the strong impression the film maker was not interested in the facts. The information that is available to us today confirms this initial impression.

The film suggests that Nestlé is responsible for the lowering of ground water levels in Pakistan. This is not true. In the region of Lahore there are about 680,000 wells. Most of these are used for agriculture, often with little or no control from the authorities. We operate two wells in the area for our bottled water activities, which are strictly monitored. These two wells have not been found to have had any impact on the water table.

The film states that Nestlé is not willing to provide drinking water to the inhabitants of Bhati Dilwan in Pakistan. Again, this is not true. We have installed two water filtration facilities in the region which can be accessed by more than 10,000 people and we are in the process of building a third.

Nestlé is the first to agree that water is a crucial issue: not only do our products require water throughout their value chain (from raw material production to use by consumers) but water is also essential for individual daily hydration and hygiene. Our commitment to water is reflected in our focus on water as one of our three Creating Shared Value (CSV) priorities and the work we actively engage in (e.g. water resource management education and policy work) with stakeholders, including local communities, intergovernmental organizations and regulatory authorities.

In regards to environmental sustainability in the bottling industry, we make every attempt to improve the environmental sustainability of our product. Nestlé Waters has undertaken a number of initiatives to further reduce our manufacturing and logistics footprint and continue to make progress toward our goal of reducing carbon intensity by 20 percent by 2013. Our research shows our bottled water has the lightest impact of any bottled beverage.

We were one of the first food or beverage manufacturers (non-alcoholic) to build plants that adhere to the stringent Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for sustainability. To date, nine of our factories meet LEED requirements.

We are also working to advance the recycling rate for PET beverage bottles in the U.S. to 60 percent by 2018, developing “next generation” bottles made from 100 percent recycled or renewable materials by 2020 and efforts to continue to reduce our carbon intensity across our full value chain.

You can learn more about our efforts to reduce our impact here: http://www.nestle-watersna.com/en/water-sustainability
DAVID G. PALAIS, PH.D., C.HG.
NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGER

NESTLE WATERS NORTH AMERICA INC.