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How does Nestlé bottle water sustainably?

Wherever we bottle water, we implement water-saving practices, and monitor how much we use to ensure there is no negative impact on local watersheds and aquifers, and that these replenish naturally. As proof of this, we will certify all of our factories using the robust Alliance for Water Stewardship standard by 2025.

In June 2021, we announced that we will advance the regeneration of the water cycle to help create a positive water impact everywhere our waters business operates by 2025. We will implement more than 100 projects for our 48 waters sites by 2025 and invest CHF 120 million to assist the implementation of these projects. As of 2025 onwards, our approach will help nature retain more water than our waters business uses in its operations. This new initiative builds on our 2017 commitment to certify all of our Waters sites by the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) by 2025.

We work closely with local communities to ensure that people’s access to water is unaffected. Nestlé strongly believes that water is a human right. In many cases, we provide access to water and sanitation to local communities near our factories, and develop shared social, economic and environmental initiatives.

New technologies at our water bottling factories help us to minimize our environmental impact. For example, our factory in Buxton, UK, uses 100% renewable energy. Our factory in Henniez, Switzerland uses agricultural biogas to help meet its power needs.

Remember, bottled water is never wasted. People drink it, and we sell it to meet increasing demand for convenient, healthy hydration. It does not compete with tap water as a major source of drinking water.

It also takes less water, less plastic and less energy to manufacture than most other bottled beverages. Nestlé Waters requires less than 2.5 liters of water to produce one liter of product, whilst 1 liter of beer requires approximately 300 liters of water.

However, only one out of every two PET bottles is ever recycled, so we are working with other companies, public authorities and NGOs to develop a true circular economy for recycling and reusing.

Wherever we bottle water, we pay what the local authorities ask us. All water users (from food companies, to golf courses and other industries), should be treated fairly, with any fees paid used to manage water resources more sustainably.

Bottled Life documentary – Nestlé’s response

Bottled Life is a one-sided and factually incorrect 2012 film about Nestlé’s bottled water business in Pakistan.

It suggests that we take groundwater from Pakistani farmers in the Punjab. However, in 2012 we only operated two out of around 680,000 wells in the Punjab, both of which the government regularly monitored.

In the village where our factory is, we had built two water filtration plants that provided free water to 10,000 people – while a third was under construction.