In Evart, a small town in America, with clean streams and an untainted aquifer, the corporate multinational, Nestle, was pumping the equivalent of 100,000 times an average Michigan resident's water use into plastic bottles for sale at $1 a bottle across the American Midwest.
In return, Nestle paid the state of Michigan $200 annually - an amount equal to the quaterly water bill of an average Flint resident, who is charged at one of the highest rates for tap water in the US.
In 2016, Nestle saw sales of $7.4bn from bottled water. Not surprisingly, the company decided it wanted to pump, bottle and sell even more of Michigan's water, requesting permission for a 60 percent increase. Their application was approved.
Multinationals like Nestle, intent on ever bigger profits from bottled water sales, stay far away from the harsh reality of Flint's brain-damaged children. Such greed shouldn't be lost on the families of Flint, Michigan. It shouldn't be lost on the rest of us either.
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