While it had it's popularity before the adoption of chlorination in the 20th century Bottled water has exploded in popularity in recent years, with the Beverage Marketing Corporation labelling bottled water as the United States favorite beverage in 2017 (Moss, 2018). And with the emergence of this highly profitable market came many who would try to stake a claim in the increasingly competitive bottled water market. But, with many members fighting for dominance, one brand has eaten up a sizeable chunk of the bottled water market. And that brand is Nestle.

Nestle bottles various kinds of water over a wide variety of names. Some you may be familiar with such as Aqua Pod, Perrier, Nestle Pure Life, Arrowhead, Poland Springs, Deer Park and many others. While many of the names Nestle sells water under started as their own companies over time Nestle has bought or taken over these local companies and continues to bottle their water under the companies name (usually in an area where people are already used to buying that brand of water.

While Nestle owning a variety of water companies makes it seem like they have a stranglehold on the market, it is actually very easy to start a bottled water business or enter it using the capital from many other beverage bottling ventures (soda, beer, etc.). This would mean that bottled water is a market in pure competition as all bottled water (aside from sparkling or spring) are virtually indistinguishable from one another. Water is instead either sold on price or the respectability and reported "purity".

Now on the the subject of abusing it's power, Nestle is well known on the national scale as a human rights violator. With the companies Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe stating in an interview that he believes calling access to water a human right "an extreme solution" (a statement he has since backed down on after massive international backlash) this is after reports of Nestle draining public aquifers for bottling purposes (Andrei, 2021), a move that has gotten them in trouble with California's water officials as Nestle continues to drain aquifers in the middle of a record-breaking drought (Singh, 2021). But, as Nestle is a international company with billions of dollars at it's disposal, any attempt to stop Nestle will be hampered by a sea of litigation.

To combat this, it's important to put money to value, and a variety of substitutions exist for Nestle's bottled water. The problem is that we as consumers are often vastly ignorant about which companies own which companies and how these companies conduct themselves on a global scale.

References:

Andrei, M. (2021, February 1). Why Nestle is one of the most hated companies in the world. ZME Science. https://www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-children/

Singh, M. (2021, May 1). Drought-hit California moves to halt Nestl from taking millions of gallons of water. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/27/california-nestle-water-san-bernardino-forest-drought

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