“Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would.”
This was the
answer Nestlé Waters North America CEO Tim Brown gave when Jay
Famiglietti, a hydrologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, asked him
whether he would ever consider moving his company's bottling operations
out of California during an interview with AirTalk's Larry Mantle.
"If I stop
bottling water tomorrow," said Brown, "people would buy another brand of
bottled water. As the second largest bottler in the state, we’re
filling a role many others aren’t filling. It’s driven by consumer
demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate.
Frankly, we’re very happy [consumers] are doing it in a healthier way.”
As the Golden
State wheezes its way through a historic drought, criticism for bottled
water companies operating factories here has been harsh. Just over a
week after a Mother Jones investigation, Starbucks announced that
it would be moving bottling operations for its Ethos Water brand from
California to Pennsylvania because of severe drought conditions. A day
before the Mother Jones story broke, Brown wrote an op-ed in the San Bernardino Sun on why the bottled water industry isn't contributing to the drought.
On Tuesday, Nestlé said that
it is investing $7 million on technology and upgrades that would turn
its Modesto milk factory into a “zero water” by extracting water from
the milk production process and using it in factory operations.
“We have these
cooling towers [for milk] that use water,” says Brown. “Previously, that
would have been fresh water that we would’ve drawn out of the municipal
supply. Now, we can use our own water that had come previously from the
milk. That water, normally, would’ve gone into the waste stream. Now it
can be reused or recycled.”
Brown says
Nestlé outfitted its factory in Jalisco, Mexico with the "zero water"
technology last year and doing so at the Modesto factory will save
almost 63 million gallons of water annually. He added that they've found
another 26 million gallons they could save a year at Nestlé USA plants
in Bakersfield and Tulare.
"That's
adaptation," says Brown. "Regardless of whether we were in the bottled
water business or not, we would need to be doing things like this to
operate in a water-scarce environment."
Famiglietti,
who teaches Earth system science at UC Irvine in addition to being NASA
JPL's top water scientist, says Nestlé has a strong reputation when it
comes to environmental stewardship. But he says bottling water still
takes 30 to 50 percent more water than turning on the tap, and he's
concerned companies like Nestlé or Starbucks might be using and bottling
thousands of acre-feet of water in California.
Famiglietti warns that while it may not seem like much, it's more than a drop in the bucket.
“An acre-foot
[nearly 326,000 gallons] is enough water to supply an entire family for a
year. So, in this time when we’re being asked to flush our toilets less
and less, we have to ask the question: Is this really an
environmentally, ethically correct thing to be doing right now?”
Still, Nestlé’s Brown says being water-conscious extends far beyond the bottled water industry.
“Everybody in
every facet of water in California has to find better design, better
use, better ways to be more efficient. We have to look at design and how
we touch water in a water scarce environment. There’s been 17 droughts
in the last 48 years. We’re in this one, there will be more, and we all
have to look at how water is going to move throughout the state.”
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