The other day I was handing out a bottle of Ice Mountain water to a customer at work, and I noticed that it had a “Made Better” sticker on it with a QR code so you could track where your bottle came from. I was very tempted to buy one to try this out, however I know our water bottles are overpriced, I try not to buy single use plastic water bottles, and Ice Mountain is a subsidiary of Nestle which is a terrible company and I try not to support them as much as I can. If you want to know more about Nestle’s ethics or lack thereof, here’s a link.
Since I didn’t buy a bottle, I pretty much just had to do my own research. According to the Ice Mountain website, “Keeping plastic out of the environment is an urgent priority for us. That’s why we're rescuing millions of pounds of plastic and transforming it into new bottles...As a water company that relies on nature, we take responsibility to help conserve it. Our hydrogeologists study and monitor water flows, and we have committed to better bottles made with 100% recycled* plastic that are 100% recyclable when empty” (Made Better Recycling Pledge 2021). I wanted to see how legitimate their plastic waste claim was, but I couldn’t really find anything. All the websites I found were run by Nestle, which is obviously biased.
So then I moved on to their next claim about conserving nature. This is where things get ~fishy~. Ice Mountain prides themselves on getting their water from Midwestern sources and according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, they have been depleting precious trout rivers to levels so low that fish can no longer live there. And to make matters worse, Nestle was granted permission to start pumping water from these rivers at 400 gallons per minute instead of the original 250. A local that used to fish in the rivers said he didn’t see any fish in the summer of 2017. In 2000 Nestle conducted research on how their business would affect the water levels, however did not have to in order to upgrade their gallon-per-minute allotment. There are rules in place to ensure that someone doesn’t take too much water from the Great Lakes, however because it would take 18 million dollars to monitor Michigan’s rivers, it won’t be done (Cosier 2018).
Basically, I couldn’t find evidence saying Nestle was lying or bending the truth about their promise to use recycled bottles, (however I wouldn’t put it past them) but they are draining Midwestern rivers, and destroying ecosystems. And no matter what, plastic water bottles are terrible for the environment, and you should avoid buying them as best you can. Nestle is a perfect example of evil, and you can’t believe what they tell you. I had fun playing detective for a minute (my own mini version of Seaspiracy hehe) and I would recommend it next time you see a company talking about their dedication to the environment.
Works Cited
“Made Better Recycling Pledge.” Ice Mountain®100% Natural Spring Water, www.icemountainwater.com/madebetter-pledge.
Susan Cosier. “Nestlé's Ice Mountain Bottled Water Leaves Nothing for Michigan's Trout.” NRDC, 5 Nov. 2018, www.nrdc.org/stories/nestles-ice-mountain-bottled-water-leaves-nothing-michigans-trout.
This was very well written and very informative. I had no idea that Nestle was basically draining rivers though I guess I'm not particularly surprised. There needs to be more restrictions put on companies and there needs to be more research done on what exactly companies are doing.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this post, as it reminded me a lot about the water project in sophomore chemistry, back in the good old days before the virus. Anyway, my group looked into boxed water, as it had recently been blowing up as an eco friendly alternative to plastic bottles. We later discovered though that the construction of the bottles actually makes them harder to recycle. Or something like that, but anyway what I'm saying is it's interesting the difference between what companies say and what they actually do. Plus the water tasted god awful.
ReplyDelete