Water bottled in Aberfoyle in an Ottawa grocery store.
Council of Canadians chapters from across the country are helping to track Nestle Pure Life brand bottled water.
In his outreach for this campaign, Council of Canadians organizer Mark Calzavara highlights, “We need your help to track Nestle in your community! Nestle has only two bottled water plants in Canada, one in Hope, BC and one in Aberfoyle, Ontario. But Nestle Pure Life brand bottled water is sold from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island to Yellowknife and beyond! We want to know if it is sold near you-and more importantly, where it was bottled- information that is conveniently written on the label. We will compile the results to show just how far out of the local watersheds the water is being exported. This is an important argument against bottled water.”
Calzavara asked the following questions (followed in this instance by answers reflecting the Nestle bottled water I found in an Ottawa grocery store today):
Where was it bottled: Aberfoyle, Ontario
The name of the store: Loblaws
The town/ province: Ottawa, Ontario
The size of the bottle: 500 ml
The price: $2.99 for a 12-pack
In other words, the Nestle bottled water I saw in my local Loblaws store was trucked 500 kilometres out of the Aberfoyle watershed.
The Pacific Institute has calculated, “In addition to the water sold in plastic bottles, twice as much water is used in the production process. Thus, every liter sold represents three liters of water. More energy is needed to fill the bottles with water at the factory, move it by truck, train, ship, or air freight to the user, cool it in grocery stores or home refrigerators, and recover, recycle, or throw away the empty bottles. The Pacific Institute estimates that the total amount of energy embedded in our use of bottled water can be as high as the equivalent of filling a plastic bottle one quarter full with oil.”
In November 2011, Business Insider reported that the production of water bottles consumed 17 million barrels of oil a year in the United States.
Please send your photo of a Nestle Pure Life brand bottled water label, along with the answers to the five questions above, to mcalzavara@canadians.org
To send an email to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne that says “Nestle and bottled water have to go!” — before her government’s consultation deadline of March 20 — please click here.
To join with the 48,299 people who have already signed our Boycott Nestle pledge, click here.
#BoycottNestle