A few months ago,
I made a video called
Nestle - Bigger Than You Know. It provided an overview of Nestle and
discussed all the brands they owned that we may not have realized. If you haven't seen it,
I recommend you watch it before this one because this is a bit of a continuation.
See, that video is 13 minutes long with only about 10 seconds or so dedicated to their involvement in the bottled water industry.
Nestle is the largest provider of bottled water in North America and in the world.
9% of all Nestle sales come from water, which if you watched my previous video, you'll realize that's a lot.
They also have an 11% market share in the industry, meaning
11% of all bottled water in the world comes from Nestle.
So, I figured it deserved a little more than a 10-second mention,
especially since it's also a big source of criticism for them. Nestle has a lot of controversy surrounding them, and their bottled water division
may be the most controversial.
Worldwide, Nestle owns and operates
forty-nine separate bottled water brands produced in 34 countries.
This is a list of the brands that are sold outside of North America,
so if you're from a different area you may recognize some of these. I don't
recognize any of them, which is part of the reason why I'm going to focus more on the North American
part of their business. The other part is because it's where most of their business takes place. The North American segment of Nestle Waters
includes three brands that are found most anywhere as well as eight brands that are found in certain regions.
There's also three iced tea brands that fall under this division,
but I won't be talking about those.
Practically all these brands have existed for at least a hundred years, and were acquired by Nestle within the past thirty.
Nestle tends to make the brands much bigger and well-known once they acquire them, so though they've been around for a long time
odds are you wouldn't have known about them until
Nestle became involved. As for the three brands that are found throughout the country, the first one they acquired was Perrier in
1992. This is a sparkling water
that's sourced from France, and it's one of the few that were
big even before Nestle. They're even partially responsible for making bottled water popular in the U.S. Back in the
1970s. In 1999, Nestle acquired another big brand called San Pellegrino, or S.
Pellegrino. Not sure why they dropped the an a lot of the time. This one comes from
Italy. The last of the waters in this category is Nestle Pure Life. You probably already knew this one was made by Nestle,
but before the year 2000 it wasn't. It was acquired from a company called Aberfoyle Springs,
Nestle quickly changed the name. And for the regional brands, there's four that stand out. Arrowhead is Nestle owned as of
1987, almost all the water for this brand is sourced from
California, so as a result it's mainly sold in California and the surrounding area. Also in
1987, they acquired Ice Mountain, which gets most of its water from
Michigan, so again the people from that surrounding area would be most familiar with this one. in
1993 they acquired Poland Spring which comes from Maine, so this is the brand sold in the New England area. New Yorkers
probably recognize this one the most. And finally, in 1993, Nestle acquired Deer Park.
They get their water from Pennsylvania and Florida, so I'll just call that whole Southeast area the Deer Park region. The other four brands
I've yet to mention are Acqua Panna, which is actually sourced from Tuscany Italy, Resource, sourced from Pennsylvania,
and there's also Ozarka, local to Texas, and Zephyrhills, local to Florida.
It's unlikely anyone watching this video is too familiar with every brand I mentioned,
But it's very likely that you're familiar with a few of them. If you're from California,
and you heard about Arrowhead for the first time here, I'm guessing you don't go shopping much, but if you're from anywhere outside of California,
chances are you are learning about it for the first time. Trust me when I say all these brands are popular and well-known in their
respective areas. Since Nestle deals with so much water and since water is something we all need, it's a perfect setup for some
controversy. I know there's a lot of people watching this that hate Nestle. There's been boycotts,
they've been called evil. My intention here is not to convince you of anything. Whether Nestle is good or bad is
completely up to you to decide. I simply want to make you aware of some of the common criticisms concerning their water.
There's a lot that aren't water related as well,
but I'm not getting into those, today. Nestle doesn't pay much for their water, really next to nothing. The price they pay
depends on the laws of the state and the specific area,
but in general it tends to be pretty cheap. For example, in their big plant in Michigan where they make Ice Mountain, they pay
$200 a year in permit fees, and that's it. there was a big story in California where they had a similar permit fee,
but even that cheap permit had been expired since the 80s. In some places they pay certain taxes, in other places
it's just the municipal rate, meaning
they're essentially doing the equivalent of you taking empty bottles, filling them up in your sink, and selling them.
Just go and look up some articles about the prices they pay in different areas, and in most cases you'll find
it's really cheap, but keep in mind the bottles they sell aren't pure profit.
They legally have to own or lease the land they're taking the water from, and of course the extraction and bottling and
transportation costs, but even after all that, they're making a lot of money. The issue people have is this:
when Nestle looks for a new location to get their water, they tend to seek out the weak areas, the places that are
struggling and can use the business. When they build a new plant, it creates jobs,
and it helps the economy. They find areas that are desperate for something like this, and use that leverage to negotiate
really good terms, and that's where they end up paying $200 a year for their water.
And then if the state wants to change any of these deals or change any of the laws,
they're met with massive resistance from Nestle and the rest of the bottled water industry.
They're also accused of taking too much water from the area.
It's like when someone asks you for a bite of your sandwich, but then they take the biggest bite
you've ever seen, and end up eating half of the whole sandwich. Sometimes some
scientists will come in and run some tests and say they're depleting all the water from the area,
but then Nestle comes in with their scientist and say there's no conclusive evidence of that and everything they're doing is
sustainable. Nestle is convincing,
but the popular does seem to be that the environment would be better off if Nestle wasn't messing with it.
There's also other environmental issues concerning the pollution they cause and extracting all the water as well as the plastic bottles
they used to sell it, and then they also get bad publicity
whenever there's a water crisis near one of their areas. Like when Flint Michigan is desperate for water,
and they're forced to pay high prices for their water that Nestle just
extracted from a few miles away and put in two bottles. The same thing goes for
California and their droughts. This kind of stuff makes a company look bad and raises a ton of ethical questions.
Consider if an area were desperate for water, and I come in selling water from a few towns over at a huge markup,
I might not come off as the most likable person.
There's even more extreme cases of Nestle doing this outside of North America.
There's been accusations of them draining all the water from certain regions and
selling it back to the locals, so they're forced into buying their water instead of just obtaining it for free. Along those lines, in
2005, the CEO of Nestle said he believed that water is not a human right. That's not a friendly
statement. if Santa Claus himself said that, we would all instantly hate him.
"There's a guy from Nestle that doesn't think water is a human right.
I mean that guy should be hunt down and shot." It's believed that the CEO says it because it allows him to get away with
the practices I was describing. If water isn't a human right, then it should be fine if he just takes all of it. If you want
any water, you have to go through him. "That's how you picture the guy talk, 'I want all the water, I want it all underneath my house.'"
It's obviously a crazy statement that everyone would disagree with. It's things like this that make me think that Nestle
doesn't even care about their reputation.
He later came out to say that it was taken out of context,
and he didn't mean it in the way that everyone perceived it,
but what else would you say after such a backlash? It's still pretty sketchy to me.
There's a lot more to it,
but these are the highlights as to why people
disapprove of Nestle waters. For some of it, you could make points in favor of Nestle, but for a lot of it
it's hard to defend them. If you have any more details about any of this or any other controversies I failed to touch on,
leave them in the comments, but also let me know in the comments
how you perceive Nestle in their water division both before and after watching this.
Did you know they were so controversial, and did you know that they were behind all these water brands that you probably see regularly?
Just by looking at the labels,
I don't know how you would have known. And a quick note, if I pronounced anything wrong or different from the way you do,
just relax about it. If you say Perry air instead of Perrier, it's fine. You wouldn't believe how many comments
I got last time saying I pronounce Nestle wrong. No need to leave them again.
I know there's an accent over the e that makes it sound like Ness-lay, but in the U.S.,
we don't have accents over our letters, so we all just kind of say Nestle.
"That's why I love Nestle Crunch!"
"Creamy, crispy, Nestle Crunch."
"New Nestle Toll House."
"The Nestle Blue Freezer!"
"Nestle is building a new bottled water plant." Nobody's wrong,
just two different ways of saying it. So any comments related to that, no need for them.
But anything else you have to say about Nestle and their water, leave it in the comments.
I'd like to hear what you have to say. Thank you for watching.
*Music*