Nestle's Water Fight
Bottled water, once a cash cow product ballooning in consumption from the early 2000s until 2007, is now a difficult business. Ask Nestle.
Along with others, Nestle is facing pressure from activists groups and other opponents to reform its bottled water business. The Wall Street Journal reports:
In Cascade Locks (Oregon), Nestlé is trying to tap 100 million gallons of water annually for its Arrowhead water brand from a new spring—and keep the environmentalists happy, too. A key is proving that water drawn from the spring—which supplies a hatchery that raises Idaho Sockeye, an endangered species—can be replaced with municipal well water, with no harm to the fish.
Nestlé is running a one-year test here to raise 700 rainbow trout in a tank filled with well water. Worried that activists might sabotage the test, Nestlé put the 1,700-gallon tank under lock and added security cameras.
Further:
Its role as leader of the U.S. bottled-water market and the fact that it taps springs in often-pristine rural areas has exposed it to particular criticism from opponents of bottled water.
The article goes on to recount the number of, to my mind, reasonable measures Nestle is taking to ensure they are (at least currently if not historically) tapping water sources responsibly. Engaging the local community, working with government entities, conducting studies. In general, it sounds like they are listening and trying to do this right.
But in the zero-sum game of activist campaigns, that counts for very little.
A couple months back, my colleague Ame wrote about Nestle’s response on the social Web to a Greenpeace campaign on Nestle’s purportedly harmful palm oil sourcing leading to deforestation. Since then, Nestle has, as some media has put it, “caved” to activist demands and reevaluated its sourcing.
But the truth is Nestle has, at least, a respectable track record of trying to do the right thing for the environment. This isn’t some big company mindlessly gobbling all the resources it can sink it’s ravenous teeth into, regardless of how activists paint it.
My advice to Nestle is, keep doing what you’re doing. Rebut critics with facts. Work with all stakeholders to understand their often real concerns. That’s where reputation is made.
Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.
