Among Other Corporations, Nestle Name Not Exactly Golden
The Red State Rebels blog offered a fascinating look into the Corporate Water Footprint meeting in San Francisco – one that many activists felt was a greenwashing exercise for water-hungry corporations.
His take was far more even-handed:
The purpose of the meeting was to share corporate experiences and strategies on water conservation (efficiency), especially as regards the carbon footprint. Climate change was not something dismissed or resisted, but treated as a given that implied greater concentration of corporate resources as years go on. While measurements and compliance (mostly voluntary) are undertaken with the zeal that billions of dollars and huge staffs can muster, the approach to water vis-a-vis climate change is still in its infancy.
Despite the writer’s non-incendiary treatment of the corporations and topics covered in the seminars (he’s a former oil industry analyst), we see an astounding change of tone when Nestle’s name rears its head (near the end of his lengthy post):
I was most uncomfortable to be in the presence of the Nestle Waters executive. This company contributed to countless deaths of babies around the world by promoting infant formula used by mothers who added tainted water and did not use the safe method of breast feeding — discouraged by Nestle. Now the corporation is buying watershed rights in the U.S. and elsewhere to take regions’ entire water rights for more plastic water bottle business. I have a hard time imagining a more harmful and unfair business except for the much larger business of exporting armaments that are not really for self defense.
Ouch.
Nestle’s long projected the image of a wrongly aggrieved corporation, unfairly targeted by activists. “Why us?” is a refrain commonly heard in their media interviews, as if the baby formula scandal, Fryeburg, McCloud, Michigan and a thousand and one other predatory incidents hadn’t happened.
That somebody on the “inside” of a conference of mega-corporations would feel the same way those of us who’ve studied the company do.
Apparently, to know Nestle (from the wrong side of their revenue stream) isn’t so much to love them.
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