This is an e-mail I got two days ago from The Story of Stuff Project’s executive director, Michael O’Heaney. I don’t know Mr. O’Heaney but The Story of Stuff Project is the organization that is doing their best to prevent pollution and fight corporate greed through making short movies about the issues.
“Dear Darko,
Today is World Water Day, honoring the important role water plays in our lives. That’s one reason I’m excited to share our latest movie with you, which tells the story of one town’s fight to protect its water from Nestlé, the world’s largest water bottler.
Cascade Locks, Oregon is heaven on earth—a small town nestled in the awe-inspiring Columbia River Gorge. But when Nestlé came to town several years ago with a proposal to bottle their water, citizens launched an all-out effort to protect it.Our Water, Our Future tells the story of these amazing activists and shares their advice for other communities facing water grabs around the world.
If these changemakers win, they’ll change history by providing an innovative solution to Nestlé’s attempts to privatize public water. What we need now is for Story of Stuff Community members around the world to listen to their story, and spread their message by sharing this film, so that together we can amplify the movement against Nestlé.
Nestlé may have immense resources, but we have a global community of active citizens like you on our side.
In California, Nestlé takes water from public lands affected by a historic drought. In Michigan the corporation drains lakes and rivers and fights any attempt to lessen its footprint. In Pennsylvania it bribes communities with ‘community development funds’ and tries to buy politicians to change zoning laws on the down low. But in all these communities there are brave citizens fighting back, and with your help we can give them the power they need to win.
Thank you for being part of our community!
Michael O’Heaney, Executive Director”
And their latest project about a fight one small community in Oregon started against endless corporate greed.
Nestlé did the same thing in British Columbia, bottling water for free and then selling it all over the world. Last year CBC wrote about it in this article.
Unfortunately, someone… khm, khm politicians khm government khm khm… let them do that. Knowing how hard it is to fight bureaucracy, I’m afraid that name of that person will remain hidden from a public. I just hope times will change, political situation will change and someone will step up and stop companies like Nestlé abusing our natural resources.
Today, most of the wars are fought for the control of production and distribution of the oil and gas. Tomorrow, it will be about water. And that tomorrow might come sooner than we expect.
gdare 
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I really feel guilty for drinking bottled water knowing what theses corporations are doing to fresh water on rivers and towns. Plus, bottled water causes health concerns from BPA and other pollutants on the plastic. Also the climate side of producing and using plastic which is destroying the seas, killing marine life, and producing higher accumulations of broken plastic in the sea and beaches.
But the dangers of drinking tap water are also serious. Maybe more here in the US than other places because of the broken infrastructure and greed. The Flint Michigan scandal really is a example of the harms of tap water. 😡 http://ow.ly/ZZJW0
I think it really boils-down to Greed, Climate and Health, and finding a real solution on these problems. 😐
I didn’t hear about that problem before, thanks for the link. I was always happy to live in cities that never had any major problem with tap water. In Belgrade most of people still drink tap water even though consumption of bottled water increased drastically after some big companies (Aquafina, Desani and Nestle, what a surprise!!!) bought water factories and spring that existed in Serbia. After that they pushed an intensive campaign and people were just hooked. However, some smaller cities in Serbia have a problem with tap water but nothing that could not be solved with more modern water purification technologies. Btw, aforementioned companies are still hiding their sources of “clear water”, some rumors saying that it nothing but a tap water. Just saying….
Over here in Vancouver, most of the city has excellent tap water, thanks to a several water reserves, Capilano lake being the biggest.
Didn’t Nestlé’s CEO once comment that “Water is a privilege, not a right”?
Yes he did. And his name is Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. After that he said that he didn’t really mean that, that sentence was taken out of context, blah, blah, blah. Even his company distanced from that, publicly, but that just gives you idea what is going on in their heads. They never said they are sorry for what he said. They are probably sorry for him saying that in public.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-privatisation-of-water-nestle-denies-that-water-is-a-fundamental-human-right/5332238
You know, I can’t help but think religion plays a role in some of the problems we’re facing as a species. Kim’s family are Mormon for example and it seems the entire religion can’t quite let go of the whole “Go forth and multiply” thing, having a couple of thousand children each. With most religions attitudes towards women, I’m surprised they don’t just call them broodmothers. Anyway, so many religions are like that and it leads to peep people having more kids than they can handle, whether that means giving them the attention to raise them right or simply being able to afford them without help. The knock on effect of it all is way more people coming into a world that’s already stretched for resources.
Add in governments trying to make money so the country can keep going, politicians out to grab their personal slice of the pie, and corporations who’re trying to build and have no problem spending a little here to step over those in the way, and those resources get stretched even further. We end up in a position where the resources that were once freely available become premium products, and a couple of generations later there’s nobody who remembers when they were free so paying for it is the norm.
As Bats says, bottled water is going through some health concerns due to supposedly toxic plastics used in the bottles. I followed some of that a couple of years ago and had to laugh. A plastic that had been claimed to be toxic in one study but, upon further testing was found to be safe, was used to bottle most waters and sodas. The original study (that had been discredited since) was brought up years later and used for a bit of fear mongering, causing a few states in the US to change what they allowed bottled drinks in. The replacement that these states enforced is something that is known to have a worse possible effect on health than the one they feared (that wasn’t true anyway).
It’s like with these e-cigarettes. In this country cigarettes can be sold but not advertised, to the point they’re hidden behind a shutter at the till so that you can’t see them until someone buys them. E-cigarettes on the other hand are allowed to be advertised (and are in much the same way as regular cigarettes were in the 1940s, both promoting them as a good smoke and a healthy thing to do) and are front and centre at the till like candy, not behind the counter. This was an untested tech that, upon being finally rested, was revealed to have a terrifying impact on health. There’s a chemical in most e-cigarette fluids that causes Popcorn Lung, a rotting of the tissue that, unlike lung cancer, has no chance of being cured. Yet it has pride of place at the tills in most shops these days, while the actually more healthy cigarettes are demonised and hidden away.
Public perception has a lot more to do with what happens in this world than any true need for safety and protection. The water bottles are now more toxic in the places that wanted to look like they were doing something to protect their people, just as the supposedly healthier vaping equipment is given pride of place in shops and is pushing people towards unusable health problems. But hey, it adds to a politicians track record of having done something, so they can springboard their careers.
Personally I blame Kanye, but that’s mainly because he’s easy to piss off and rappers have to write a song about you when you make them mad.
*peers into distance*
I may have come a little far from the original subject.
Your comment is a post by itself. And yes, you did wander away a bit but this part sums it all:
“Add in governments trying to make money so the country can keep going, politicians out to grab their personal slice of the pie, and corporations who’re trying to build and have no problem spending a little here to step over those in the way, and those resources get stretched even further. We end up in a position where the resources that were once freely available become premium products, and a couple of generations later there’s nobody who remembers when they were free so paying for it is the norm.”
And what you’ve said in the following paragraph reminded me on so many researches done about, say… vitamin supplements, one of my favorites. Some recommend (backed by pharmaceutical companies, probably) that it is absolutely necessary to take them because our way of living is different than 50 years ago and now we have to use them to maintain balanced and healthy life. Then, a month or so later, you can hear about another research saying that we don’t have to use them at all, because artificially produced supplements are not consumed by body in full, that most of it goes out of body unused, meaning we are wasting money and sometimes put our bodies at risk. And it goes like that, back and forth, for ages, and average consumer is completely screwed up – should they take them or not. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle but no one wants to tell you that. The purpose is to take your money. Or health. Probably both and then you are someone else’s problem but you still need to go to pharmacy and buy some drugs to try to fix your ruined health…