NESTLE PURE LIFE
Top-selling bottled H20 in Canada. Nestlé’s been the subject of a global boycott for decades thanks to its dodgy baby formula marketing in poor countries. It’s also drawn ire for donating over $1 million to oppose GMO labelling south of the border, and sparked a 200,000-strong petition last month for trying to patent a fennel flower extract. Eco-shape bottle uses 30 per cent less plastic than the original bottle, though, FYI, 37 per cent of all water bottles bought in T.O. end up in landfill. Also owns Crystal Springs, Montclair Natural Spring (from Ontario and BC sources), as well as Perrier and San Pellegrino imports.
Score: N
AQUAFINA/DASANI
Though Aquafina is owned by Pepsi and Dasani by Coke, they’re virtually identical: filtered water from local GTA taps, a process using 2,000 times more energy than accessing plain tap water, says Pacific Institute. Both offer “greener” bottles (50 per cent thinner plastic 30 per cent plant-based sugarcane plastic). Both companies were funders of U.S. anti-GMO-labelling lobby and are targets of a ForestEthics bid to get them to ditch tar sands fuel. Oxfam’s Behind The Brands scorecard gives both failing grades.
Score: N
FIJI
Company talks up Fiji Water Foundation efforts to bring clean water and improved health care to poor Fijians, but nonetheless, each bottle comes from 12,000 kilometres away (under a military junta, where the firm operated with tax-free status until a few years ago) when Canada is overflowing with its own springs – and taps. Bottles have no recycled content, though Fiji says it’s shaved 17 per cent of the plastic off its smaller bottles. Sued for a misleading “carbon-negative” claim that won’t be actualized until 2037.
Score: N
NAYA
Bonus point for the fact that the bottle is made from 100 per cent recycled plastic. Natural spring water comes from foothills of the Laurentians and/or Revelstoke, BC. Quebec water orgs weren’t happy the company was bought out by European multinational Danone. Still, if you’re forced to pick bottled aqua in a pinch, this will have to do.
Score: NN
REUSABLE CANISTER
No competition – a stainless steel or glass canister wins out every time. If yours is empty, don’t be shy about hitting up random cafés, restos, bars, anywhere with a tap. Also get the Water Brothers Quench app to map out refill spots and fountains near you, and look for the city’s HT0 To Go water stations at summer events.
Score: NNNNN
Green Gadget Of The Week
BOTL FILTER
Leery of the chlorinated stuff coming out of random taps and fountains? If you’re far from your own home filter, drop this Canadian-made portable water filter (basically a case containing a replaceable activated charcoal pouch) into your canister for cleaner water on the go. $12.99. botl.ca.
Who’s Water? Our Water
Why is Nestle Refusing controls on pumping out h20 during droughts?
Deep beneath the country roads in Wellington County, where Toronto’s yawning sprawl reverts to rolling farmland, sits a hell of a lot of water.
All that H2O is a major cash resource for the country’s biggest bottler, multinational food giant Nestlé. Since the late 80s, the company has pumped up and shipped out billions of litres from the Hillsburgh aquifer, with what amounts to a free pass from provincial regulators – until last year.
That’s when the Ministry of the Environment bowed to community pressure and tacked a new restriction onto the firm’s permit. Before okaying the taking of over 1 million litres of water a day (at only $3.71 a day) plus permit costs, it demanded that Nestlé ease off water use by 10 to 20 per cent during times of official drought.
But Nestlé appealed, and the MOE quietly proposed a settlement with the water giant on the side, effectively removing mandatory drought restriction conditions from the permit. An environmental review tribunal is set to announce any day now whether it agrees with the MOE’s climb-down.
Suffice it to say, water activists are up in arms. Says Mike Nagy, chair of Wellington Water Watchers, which along with the Council of Canadians applied for party status during the hearing: “We oppose the permit in general, but at least the conditions were a step in the right direction. Nestlé’s in a position to profit from shortage, and it’s happening all around the world.”
In a public statement, Nestlé Waters Canada says it has always complied with requests to voluntarily reduce water usage during drought and that “no other municipal or commercial water users in the watershed would be required to comply in the event of drought except Nestlé Waters, even though many of them draw considerably more water.”
Maybe so, but Council of Canadians water campaigner Emma Lui says Nestlé’s use of water is entirely “consumptive,” meaning it does not get returned to the watershed but is transported out of the region. And if Nestlé is voluntarily reducing its water usage during droughts, then it should have no problem adhering to mandatory restrictions.”
Both protesting parties note that the permit system fails to account for the mounting impacts of climate change on our water. Just last summer Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller bashed the province for failing in its duty to ensure water-takings are managed carefully and don’t make dry conditions worse.
Nestlé hopes the MOE will replace automatic drought restrictions with a seven-day pump test to see how droughts affect Nestlé source water, which the company maintains has no impact on the community’s groundwater levels. However, the Council says the test is way too narrow and fails to assess the aquifer as well as streams, wetlands and waterways outside of Nestlé’s monitoring range.
Says Lui: “Restricting the amount of water Nestlé can pump during droughts would show the government respects its role as a ‘trustee’ of our common water resources.”
Nature Notes
OUR CLIMATE-COOKING LAND
Ontario Enviro Commish Gord Miller issued a bare-bones report last week slamming the governing Libs for doing “nothing” on climate change over the past year. In his Failing Our Future report, he says the province will totally blow our 2020 greenhouse gas reduction targets if we stay on our present course, with no new initiatives to get the ball rolling – particularly if we keep upping our reliance on fossil fuel natural gas. Meanwhile in other climate news, the Canadian The Association of Petroleum Producers’ annual forecast is out, announcing Canada’s crude output should spike to 6.7 million barrels a day by 2030 if new pipelines like Keystone get built (that’s 500,000 barrels above previous forecasts). Question: is that a promise or a threat?
U.S. WISHY-WASHY ON TOXINS
South of the border, the Dems and Republicans are finally agreeing on something: it’s time to get tougher on chemicals, sort of. The Toxics Substances Control Act has done close to nothing to protect the public from dangerous chems since, oh, 1976. The Lautenberg-Vitter Bill, introduced days before Senator Frank Lautenberg’s death last week, would beef up federal power to test suspected toxins on the market and make sure new chems don’t present an “unreasonable risk.” But enviros like the Environmental Working Group say the compromise bill “preserves an incredibly weak safety standard” and will prevent states from generating their own reforms. protect consumers.
