California orders bottled water firm to stop drawing from natural springs
BlueTriton, the company that owns Arrowhead brand, has been taking water from San Bernardino springs for more than 100 years
California has ordered the company that owns Arrowhead bottled water to stop using some of the natural springs it has utilized for more than a century, following a years-long campaign by environmentalists to stop the operation.
Regulators on Tuesday voted to significantly reduce how much water BlueTriton – the owner of the Arrowhead brand – can take from public lands in the San Bernardino mountains. The ruling is a victory for community groups who have said for years that the bottled water firm has drained an important creek that serves as a habitat for wildlife and helps protect the area from wildfires.
Arrowhead bottled water traces its roots to a hotel at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains that first opened in 1885 and began selling bottled spring water from its basement in 1906. But environmental and community groups say the company has never had permission to take water from the springs in the San Bernardino national forest.
The state water resources control board agreed that BlueTriton does not have permission to use the water and ordered the company to stop. The order does not ban the company from taking any water from the mountain, but it significantly reduces how much it can take.
"Blue triton" that's interesting let look into that.... it's Nestle
I guess Nestlé has such a reputation they wanted to rebrand.
You see it all the time.
Facebook became "Meta" ,Comcast became "Xfinity", and I'm sure theres plenty of other examples.
Rapeseed oil became Canola oil.
Im gonna make custom stickers and annoy the Aldi employees.
Still called that in the UK.
Google became Alphabet
Blackwater became Xe Services became Academi became Constellis Holdings
I think that had more to do with symbolizing a change in the direction of the company (ie: metaverse) and also a global name for a variety of products (instead of just Facebook) rather than just trying to hide who they are. They don't even have any Meta-branded products. Facebook is still Facebook, Instagram is still Instagram, and WhatsApp is still WhatsApp.
I can see your point but it more so comes off as a "rebrand". Trying to distance themselves from what they used to be so hopefully people forget all the shit they pulled.
That said, it very well may be just an attempt to shift the direction of a company but I highly doubt thats really the motive or the only intention.
People don't open the Facebook app or log into Facebook.com and forget all the shit they pulled because they changed their name to Meta.
Meta Quest instead of Oculus Quest
They've already removed their logo from several products (ex: Nestlé Pure Life is just Pure Life now). Now you have to check back of the label more closely to avoid them. But rebranding would make that more difficult. Instead of actually stopping the human rights violations they rather just do this. It's disgusting.
It might just be that Nestle is made up of like hundreds of companies. That's why Nestle bans don't work, cause it's all Nestle
A megacorporation by any other name still smells the same. And Nestle stinks.
Nestle is the biggest water thief in North America, even though they recently sold both their US/Can regular water bottling business.
Nestle did keep their premium water bottling sites tho.
It's wild to me that public resources like water are given, not sold, to corporations like Nestle- who then go on to lobby for less public spending on water systems, and who mass-produce those shitty bottles that end up everywhere.
Charge them royalties for taking water from springs, make it cheaper for nestle to buy water from a utility.
Charge them an extremely high plastic tax that makes it an unviable business model too. Suddenly they'll find alternatives real quick!
That's what I was searching for in the article, how much this company has paid for 100 years worth of water. It's insane that they don't pay at all.
Guess I'm just old but I still think it's insane that anyone pays for water at all. I 40yrs people will think it's nuts to get free breathable air.
BlueTriton (depressingly corporate garbage name, btw) is still basically Nestlé.
Reporting shouldn't be allowed to further obfuscate the corporate hierarchies involved in fucking up everyone's lives. If reporters included all the arcane structural and legal bullshit that corporations pull in order to escape even the slightest sliver of responsibility (and spin public perception), the average reader would be much more aware of the corporatocratic hellscape in which we live.
Edit: added a bit because it's technically not Nestlé but that's the whole problem as the technicality is about as far as it goes...
Bottled water is so dumb.
there is a genuine need, and it has its place, but that place is not being mass-produced and sold for ridiculous profits at the expense of the environment.
I mean, it's a microcosm but I remember a friend in uni refusing to drink tap or Brita water. He'd just keep cases and cases of water by his mini fridge and just plow threw them.
I got upset with my sister in law because she'll buy bottled water when I had a water filter in our fridge. Hell, you can boil it if you're really uncertain. She said there was stuff about chemicals and I said the plastic for the water probably isn't any better for you.
But taking a shower in chemicals are okay? The mental gymnastics of some people.
Tap water is also more regulated than bottled water too.
I'm not defending bottled water, but in regards to the shower argument, there's a reason things are rated for topical use vs food grade
the better argument is someone drinking bottled water while using tap water to wash their foods
Tap water is regulated by the EPA, and bottled water is regulated by thr FDA (in the states). Both have to make it drinkable. EPA forces types of contaminents, intended use (residential water is designed to be drinkable), and have all water quality reports public after treating said water. EPA however doesnt regulate the pipes, so the flynt michigan sotuation came out due to that.
Bottled water tests water at source and before product. Bottled water must label the source where the water came from, which includes tap...
Unless the person drinking only bottled water actively reads the label to know what the source water is, its a very popr argument to avoid tap when the attempt to avoid it is half baked.
I think you misunderstood what I said, I'm agreeing with you on the mental gymnastics, but the argument you put out wasn't exactly the best when given to the PoV of the gymnast; they're avoiding ingesting tap water in favor of bottled, but they ingest it regardless, unless they wash everything with bottled water like a very crazy person
and didn't expect to respond again about this crazy hypothetical person that lives rent free in both our minds, but I'm going to evict that person right now for my own sanity
Marketing is a hell of a drug I guess
Tricked people into buying water they can get for near free from the tap
Possibly the biggest grift in history
Think of how many bottles of water you can get for $10. Anything from event prices to Costco prices, doesn’t matter.
For $10 I get about a thousand gallons of tap water. I have a back yard pond, so I think in terms of bulk quantity cost of tap water, lol. Technically the sewer charge is about another $10 for that same amount of water.
The water is pretty good, and tastes just about perfect to me once it’s run through the cheap filter in our refrigerator.
IMO the worst part of bottled water is the plastic, plus the thought of shipping literal water around the country/world.
We could use something other than plastic. We should be banning the use of single-use plastics everywhere.
I am sure emergency workers would rather not have to haul around water in glass containers after a disaster. If you have another material that is cheap, can be injected molded, bends instead of breaking, only impacts humans under mass exposure, and lightweight plesse let people know.
Aluminum is lighter than glass. Cardboard can be treated so that it holds fluid as well (and can still be made recyclable)
Regardless, plastic requires fossil fuels to make. It needs to go.
I have aluminum cups that can be (hand) washed/reused/recycled. Most plastic cannot be recycled
The tech is there, companies just need to be incentivized to use it.
I don't know how the chemistry works, but we had aluminum cups and they were somehow taking the calcium in the water and concentrating it into little deposits on the bottom of the cup which were hard to get off. I switched back to glass.
Alright so go and do it. I have done some plastic extruder machine control systems. Let me know when you need my help. It is pretty crazy to me that there is this really simple solution that no one on earth is trying and there is a shitton of money to be made but it is possible.
Are you missing the point that plastic is used because it is cheaper, not because it is better for humanity and nature?
It's like saying "so go ahead and fix the climate, if fixing the climate is so good for us". What exactly do you think the problem is?
Bronze, but it aint cheap.
Thermoses are commonly used, and they even have a vacuum inside!
If you don't care about keeping the internal temperature, there's a lot of options for good reusable water containers. Why should we even use disposable containers if we can avoid it?
I have a glass water bottle I use daily. I am talking about a specific use case.
silicon?
It is brittle right?
I smell lawsuit. Good news, but precedent is strong for a successful lawsuit.