We have No Water to Waste
Recently, the water justice movement celebrated a major win: a giant American corporation, BlueTriton, announced plans to sell its largest bottling facility and shut down operations in Ontario by January 2025.
For years, BlueTriton, formerly Nestlé, was extracting enough groundwater to fill as many as 14 billion plastic bottles. Laid end to end, those bottles would stretch 5.6 million kilometres – enough to circle the globe 70 times.
While this is a victory, the fight isn’t over. BlueTriton and other companies continue to extract millions of litres of groundwater annually in other parts of Canada, including Quebec and British Columbia.
This is unacceptable. Water is a human right – not a commodity to be bought and sold.
It’s time to stop Big Water from wasting our precious resources for profit.
The Lowdown on Big Water
Billion-dollar hedge funds, multinational corporations, and armies of paid lobbyists want to own our water and the infrastructure that provides it — so they can sell it back to us for a profit.
After heavy industry lobbying, the federal government exempted plastic bottles from its plans to phase out single-use plastics last year.
Water-bottling companies are buying up water rights from provincial governments and Big Water has been making secretive deals with under-funded communities across the country to buy control of Canadians’ tap water.
High-stakes lobbying is ramping up to ensure the new Canada Water Agency lacks the regulatory and enforcement powers that would protect water over industry profits.
Water in the hands of private companies is a threat to the human right to clean drinkable water.
The most powerful protection from Big Water is an informed and organized network of Public Water Champions.
Become A Public Water Champion
The Council of Canadians is ramping up our campaign against Big Water, and we need your support again.
Take the pledge today never to use commercial bottled water. Become a Public Water Champion by boycotting all bottled water.
Big Victories against Big Water
In 2024, Blue Triton announced the closure of its operations in Ontario by January 2025, highlighting the power of sustained public pressure.
In 2021, Blue Triton had demanded 10-year permits but was only issued a 5-year permit, after the public flooded the Ontario Ministry of Environment with letters of opposition.
In 2016, mounting public pressure forced Ontario to declare a moratorium on new permits for bottling groundwater. Five years later they enacted stronger regulations and gave municipalities the power to veto proposed permits within their boundaries.
We have welcomed over 105 Blue Communities worldwide! And have recently launched the Blue Community Schools project with Maude Barlow to support students and educators to take action. Blue Communities support the human right to water, reject bottled water and keep water systems public. The program also provides a starting point for activists to work together locally, building relationships and community power.
In 2021, along with CUPE, we helped persuade the Township of Mapleton, Ontario, to reject a costly P3 financing scheme that would have paved the way for increased privatization of municipal water infrastructure across Canada.
