{"id":80249,"date":"2016-09-26T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80249"},"modified":"2016-09-25T16:28:08","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T15:28:08","slug":"boycott-nestle-says-petition-after-company-outbids-town-for-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/boycott-nestle-says-petition-after-company-outbids-town-for-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Boycott Nestl\u00e9, Says Petition after Company Outbids Town for Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

23 Sep 2016 – <\/em>A national boycott of Nestl\u00e9 is launched just one day after it emerged that the company bought a supply of safe drinking water out from under a small town.<\/p>\n

Activist group The Council of Canadians launched the boycott on Thursday [22 Sep] amid news that Nestl\u00e9 outbid the Township of Centre Wellington, Ont. for a well<\/a> that could have given it a new water supply.<\/p>\n

A Nestl\u00e9 spokesman said the company didn’t know it was competing with a municipality, but it nevertheless matched their offer to complete the purchase from the Middlebrook Water Company for “future business growth.”<\/p>\n

\"Bottles<\/a>

Bottles of Pure Life brand water move on the production line at the Nestle Waters Canada plant near Guelph, Ont. in January 2015. (Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

“The water crisis is at our door here in Canada,” said Maude Barlow, chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, in a statement.<\/p>\n

“Groundwater resources are finite and currently taxed by droughts, climate change and over-extraction. At this pace, we will not have have enough for our future needs.<\/p>\n

“We must safeguard groundwater reserves for communities and future generations.”<\/p>\n

The group is asking people who support the boycott to sign an online declaration<\/a> that aims to stop Nestl\u00e9 from profiting from bottled water.<\/p>\n

“The water crisis is at our door here in Canada.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“In the middle of a severe drought in southern Ontario, bottled water giant Nestl\u00e9 continues to extract four million litres of groundwater every day from an aquifer near Guelph,” the declaration says.<\/p>\n

“Nestl\u00e9 pays less than $15 per day for this precious resource and then ships it out of the community in hundreds of millions of single use plastic bottles for sale all over North America \u2014 at an astronomical mark up.”<\/p>\n

Last year, a widely circulated petition in B.C. took aim at bottling companies like Nestl\u00e9 that were drawing water in B.C. for $2.25 per million litres<\/a>, at the same time that wildfires raged throughout the province.<\/p>\n

The petition, which attracted over 230,000 signatures, demanded that Nestl\u00e9 pay more to draw the water.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

Nestl\u00e9 draws water from close to Kawkawa Lake near Hope, B.C. (Photo: Google Maps)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Council of Canadians declaration isn’t asking for Nestl\u00e9 to be charged more; instead, it wants to “stop Nestl\u00e9 from profiting from water” altogether.<\/p>\n

It is asking supporters to avoid buying bottled water or any Nestl\u00e9 products.<\/p>\n

“Wasting our limited groundwater on frivolous and consumptive uses such as bottled water is madness,” it said.<\/p>\n

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said Friday that the provincial government would look at ways to ensure community needs were met over those of bottled water companies.<\/p>\n

“As we look at the water bottling industry, that has to be a question because we’re talking about what we could argue is our most precious resource,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There is much pressure on our water, so as we have this discussion about our water, the status of and the treatment of water bottling companies, that needs to be taken into consideration.”<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Jesse Ferreras is associate news editor of trends and traffic for<\/em> The Huffington Post Canada. He was previously an online editor at canada.com and the<\/em> Pique Newsmagazine in Whistler<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2014 With files from The Canadian Press<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 huffingtonpost.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

23 Sep 2016 – A national boycott of Nestl\u00e9 is launched just one day after it emerged that the company bought a supply of safe drinking water out from under a small town. Activist group The Council of Canadians launched the boycott on Thursday [22 Sep] amid news that Nestl\u00e9 outbid the Township of Centre Wellington, Ont. for a well that could have given it a new water supply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}