Environmental Enlightenment #3 (Support Sustainable & Socially Responsible Companies)

I'm banning all Nestle products.

I've been on somewhat of a documentary binge lately. A while ago I watched Tapped which was a film about the bottled water industry and it's detriment to society and the environment. The star of the film was Nestle who owns a wealth of bottled water companies and 5 of the largest in the U.S. (Deer Park, Poland Springs, Ice Mountain, Arrowhead and Perrier). Then a month or so ago I watched Flow: For The Love of Water which asks the all important question: Can someone own water? Think about it like this; Would you pay someone for air to breathe? You need air to live just like you need water to live. Why would you pay someone for water when you can turn on your sink and get it for free?



It's all about the marketing. Water bottles say things like, "pure", "fresh" and "clean." This creates the association in our minds that our tap water is NOT these things. Which is not at all true. Especially for me living in Chicago with Lake Michigan supplying our water, it seems so redundant to buy bottled water. Besides being a waste of plastic, these companies take over water sources, pump out the water for free and sell it back to us at a huge mark-up. That isn't right. Flow takes a further look into third world countries where clean water isn't readily available and the clean bottled water isn't affordable. Clean water should be a basic human right, not a luxury. Why are these companies allowed to privatize water? You can sign a petition here to add access to clean water as a basic human right.

That was already enough for me to be sick of Nestle. But a couple days ago a friend and I were discussing recent documentaries we had seen and she mentioned the film The Business of Being Born (which ironically is sitting in my Netflix queue waiting for me to watch it). She then revealed to me that Nestle had suffered some controversy back in the 1970's and many people have boycotted them since. Apparently Nestle was giving away "free samples" of infant formula to mothers in third world countries. The mothers, in most cases, were uneducated on the pros of breastfeeding and since they were poor and the formula was free they would give it to their babies. The mothers also didn't know that as soon as they started bottle feeding that their breast milk would dry up. Once this happened, and they ran out of the free sample, they had no choice but to buy the formula to feed their babies. Most of the mothers could not read and therefore didn't know how to properly mix the formula. Going back to the unavailability of clean water in poverty stricken countries; this formula was now being mixed with unsafe drinking water and fed to the babies. Sometimes the mothers didn't have enough money for the formula and they would try to divide up a package into 2 or 3 separate feedings. Not knowing that this was causing their babies to become malnourished. Some people will say that Nestle is not to blame for the misuse of their product. But if a multi-billion dollar company can't be bothered to be responsible for educating their target market on how to use their product, then I don't want anything to do with them.

Besides all of that they have also been scrutinized for illegal deforestation to obtain palm oil which is used in KitKats. I can live without KitKats.

I don't mean to go on a rant, but Nestle boils my blood. As such, I've decided to ban all of their products. You can see their full list of products here. I think that it is important to realize that every time we buy a product we are essentially voting on it. By buying Nestle products we are saying that their practices are okay. As consumers we hold the power over corporations. We have the right to refuse and companies will either change or go out of business. I am voting to support sustainable and socially responsible companies.