<story><title>Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for%20%20https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aurelium</author><text>The plant locations should probably tighten up their water laws so that they&amp;#x27;re getting at least something back from Nestle, but the real wrongdoers in this scheme might be the consumers ...&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a worrying number of people in the world living in places with perfectly potable water, but who insist on drinking only environmentally-damaging bottled water through some superstitious belief that it&amp;#x27;s better for them.&lt;p&gt;If Nestle didn&amp;#x27;t have such a lucrative market to fleece, Nestle&amp;#x27;s profits would be far less impressive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Chathamization</author><text>&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s a worrying number of people in the world living in places with perfectly potable water, but who insist on drinking only environmentally-damaging bottled water through some superstitious belief that it&amp;#x27;s better for them.&lt;p&gt;It always seems odd that bottled water gets trashed a lot more than bottled soda, when soda is both worse for the consumer&amp;#x27;s health, and probably has a higher environmental footprint (since it&amp;#x27;s not just the water, but the water plus whatever sweeteners and chemicals get added).&lt;p&gt;True, soda doesn&amp;#x27;t taste the same as tap water, but bottled water doesn&amp;#x27;t taste the same as tap water a lot of the time, either. Some people also prefer the convenience of buying a bottle of water, and it would seem strange to say: &amp;quot;Hey, it&amp;#x27;s fine to buy something in the bottle if you&amp;#x27;re doing so for the flavor, but if you&amp;#x27;re doing so for the sake of convenience, that&amp;#x27;s terrible.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for%20%20https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aurelium</author><text>The plant locations should probably tighten up their water laws so that they&amp;#x27;re getting at least something back from Nestle, but the real wrongdoers in this scheme might be the consumers ...&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a worrying number of people in the world living in places with perfectly potable water, but who insist on drinking only environmentally-damaging bottled water through some superstitious belief that it&amp;#x27;s better for them.&lt;p&gt;If Nestle didn&amp;#x27;t have such a lucrative market to fleece, Nestle&amp;#x27;s profits would be far less impressive.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>prostoalex</author><text>They do mention consumers &amp;quot;worry about the safety of tap water after the high-profile contamination in Flint&amp;quot;, so I am guessing people are a bit unwilling to take someone&amp;#x27;s word on &amp;quot;perfectly potable water&amp;quot; without seeing the proof. Or rather, it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;perfectly potable&amp;quot; until oops, the past few years.&lt;p&gt;When I was in Stockholm I remember seeing some sort of artsy indicator of water&amp;#x2F;air quality that runs 24&amp;#x2F;7 right on the public boardwalk. We need something similar in every town - a constant feed of water quality and ppm measurements, perhaps with a bit of crowdsourcing thrown in, similar to what Wunderground does with weather.</text></comment>