Protesters call on Nestlé to halt water bottling operations amid drought

Protesters demanding Nestlé shut down water bottling operations in California in the face of the ongoing drought delivered a petition of more than 500,000 signatures supporting their cause to one of the corporation’s plants in South Los Angeles Tuesday.

“While residents and businesses are doing their part and face mandatory water usage restrictions, Nestlé is bottling the scarce resource straight from the heart of California’s drought, exporting it out of state and selling it for profit,” said Laura Leavitt, a worker for Courage Campaign, the group that organized the demonstration.

In a statement, Nestlé, which has its U.S. headquarters in Glendale, stated it has five bottled water plants in California and uses a total of 725 million gallons of water each year.

More than 100 people gathered outside the Los Angeles bottling site, near the corner of 20th Street and Compton Avenue, while a simultaneous demonstration was held outside the Sacramento plant.

Leavitt said she’d like to see Nestlé follow Starbucks, which announced earlier this month plans to shut down its manufacturing site for Ethos Water and move it to Pennsylvania.

“We want an immediate stop … it’s an easy thing that can be done right now to save hundreds of millions of gallons,” she said.

But Nestlé spokeswoman Jane Lazgin notes that people continue to need water and that halting bottling in California won’t have much impact.

“We’ve invested $2.5 million in our California bottled water plants to recover and reuse much of our process water, used in the manufacturing process,” she stated in the release. “Building on these reductions, Nestlé last week announced we are bringing new technologies and practices to California that will save an additional 144 million gallons a year.”