The unquenched thirst of corporations for water is one of the reasons for the water crisis. Agriculture, much of it fueled by profit-driven, industrialized food systems around the world, uses about 70% of the world’s available water. Industry uses another 20%, leaving just 10% for people and their communities. As corporations have claimed a growing share of water in recent decades, the water remaining available to people has rapidly diminished.

And yet this World Water Day, a growing number of corporations, including Coke, Nestlé and Starbucks ask us to believe that they offer the solution to the world’s water woes, in a public relations effort that seeks to draw attention away from corporation’s role in helping to create the problem.

Coke, Nestlé and Starbucks are each part of the new water-industrial-complex, buying water cheaply, then bottling it and selling it as a high profit-margin consumer product. Bottled water is the fastest growing – and one of the most profitable – segments of the beverage market.

Coke has undertaken a public relations campaign that boasts of the $35 million it will spend this year on water development projects around the world. That sounds like a lot of money, until you consider that Coke spends more than $1.7 billion a year on advertising.

Coke’s $35 million on water development translates into 2.9 cents this year for each of the 1.2 billion people who lack water. By contrast, Coke spent 26.8 cents last year on advertising for every man, woman and child on earth. Coke paid its CEO Neville Isdell $32.3 million in compensation last year, almost as much as it will spend to solve the world’s water problems this year.

Nestlé has responded to critics of its water practices with the argument that the corporation doesn’t really use that much. In reality, Nestlé is the world’s leading bottler of water, using 1.86 liters of water for each 1 liter bottle it sells. This extra .86 liters of wastage, multiplied by the 22 billion liters of water that Nestlé bottles annually, would provide enough water to meet the annual needs of more than one million desperately thirsty people around the world.

Starbucks has undertaken an aggressive advertising campaign promoting the $10 million it expects to donate to water development projects over five years. This will be funded by a nickel for each $1.80 bottle of Ethos water it sells at its stores. But when we do the math, it turns out that Starbucks’ seemingly generous gift amounts to 58 cents per day for each of Starbuck’s 9,446 U.S. stores.

Corporate philanthropy does help a few people gain access to water, but it also creates the false sense that corporation’s are solving the world’s water problems. This is far from the truth. The water acquisition practices of bottled water corporations like Coke and Nestlé, and an unslakeable thirst for profits by firms like Starbucks, not only don’t solve the world’s water crisis, they make it worse.  

Village residents in India have repeatedly said “no” when Coke has drilled wells for bottling plants. Likewise, citizens of Michigan, California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine have said “no” to Nestlé’s plans to capture their community’s water in bottles and send it hundreds of miles away to be sold at a profit. When water privatizing corporations don’t listen and instead put corporate profits ahead of human health, long-term water security for people and their communities is jeopardized.

With water, as with most things, there’s a yawning difference between charity and justice. This World Water Day, let’s not buy the corporate hype and instead stick to the truth that has guided humanity for millennia: Water is a gift to be shared by all, not a commodity to be packaged, traded and sold, with profits streaming to the bottom line.

Scott Klinger(sklinger@stopcorporateabuse.org) is the Research Director for Corporate Accountability International—formerly Infact—a nonpartisan membership organization that protects people by waging and winning campaigns challenging irresponsible and dangerous corporate actions around the world. For more information visit www.stopcorporateabuse.org.

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