Thursday, February 22, 2018

Water is life. Capitalism is death.

Though bottled water companies and lobbying groups for the industry like the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) promote their products as healthier than tap water, 64 percent of bottled water comes from municipal tap water sources—meaning that Americans are often unknowingly paying for water that would otherwise be free or nearly free. A gallon of bottled water costs about $9.50—nearly 2,000 times the price of tap water for municipal taxpayers.

"When bottlers are not selling municipal water, they are pumping and selling common water resources that belong to the public, harming the environment, and depleting community water supplies," reads a new report entitled "Take Back the Tap," by Food & Water Watch.

The bottled water industry has an enormous environmental footprint, using about four billion pounds of plastic for packaging in 2016—which required an energy input equal to at least 45 million barrels of oil.  The National Park Service banned bottled water in the nation's parks in 2011, successfully preventing about two million plastic bottles from entering the waste stream per year until the Trump administration reversed the ban in 2017—after years of increased lobbying expenditures by the industry. These companies’ lobbying expenditures between 2014 and 2016 topped $28 million.”

Nestle also depleted California's scarce water supplies during its recent historic drought, using up water that could have been used by nearly 2,200 households per year. According to the most recent (2015) information, in California, Nestle’ purchased from the state 36,000,000 gallons of water, for which it paid $524.00. The State Water Board (licensing agency) only charges Nestle’ to operate its equipment, and NOT for the water. The Arrowhead and Pure Life brands are both owned by Nestle’ (they have others too). Nestle’ operates the exact same way in Michigan (and likely other states). Even in Canada (British Columbia), they have the same sticky sweet deal. Per the Council of Canadians, for every million litres of water (264,172 gallons) that Nestle’ buys, it pays the princely sum of $2.25. Neither of the dollar figures cited here are typos. Somewhere on YouTube is a clip of Nestle’s CEO, opining that he does not believe that access to public water is a human right.


The study finds that attempts by Americans to avoid pollutants by relying on bottled water are also misguided: "Most people also do not realize that the drinking water that they can get from their tap for a fraction of the price of bottled water actually comes with more safeguards than bottled water, since the federal government requires more rigorous safety monitoring of municipal tap water than it does of bottled water."

The industry frequently targets low-income groups, people of color, and immigrant communities—people who may have lacked or still lack access to safe water—for their marketing campaigns. In 2014, Nestle spent upwards of $5 billion advertising its Pure Life brand, with $3.8 billion going to Spanish-language TV ads.

This helps illustrate the con that is Capitalism and modern mainstream economics.
If water is free and you get out from a tap there no impact on GDP when it consumed. There is no “value” assigned to the water monetarily it is not an asset or a measurement of wealth under this fraudulent system. Now charge a fee for it. The more that is consumed, the greater the GDP growth and the more the Economists chortle in glee and call the system a success. If water is free and owned by the Commons then none of us have any “wealth” as far as that water concerned under that stupid system. If it PRIVATIZED and deemed the property of a nestles it suddenly has the value of billions on billions of dollars and it then claimed “this proves Capitalist systems create wealth”.

2 comments:

Gramsci's cat said...

Lovely critique of GDP. But water isn't free and nor is it unlimited in supply. Many examples across the globe both of human actions reducing or wasting available water and of not enough water for human needs Think about this when you bang on about overpopulation being a myth.

ajohnstone said...

What we have in Scotland is a water rate which means there is no metering, charging by the amount of water used. It is hidden among the other council service charges. England has brought in metering. The green argument is that pricing water encourages economic use of it. But domestic water usage is dwarfed by industrial consumption.

There will indeed be water shortages with climate change and perhaps the worst offender is agriculture such as inappropriate crops in near-desert conditions requiring irrigation.