Nestle Water Exploitation

Nestle Water Exploitation
Tim Brown is the current Chairman, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and President of Nestle Canada (Tim Brown, 2015). Nestle is a Swiss multinational food and beverage company that is most well-known for their candy and confectioneries, however, they also produce baby formula, coffee, tea, dairy products, ice cream, pet foods, snacks, frozen foods and even bottled water (Andrei, 2015). What many people don’t realize is that Nestle is considered to be one of the most hated companies in the world according to Andrei (2015). The reasons for this are due to allegations of child labor, unethical promotion, manipulating uneducated mothers, pollution, price fixing and mislabeling. The most recent scandal involves nestles involvement in water exploitation globally. This article will focus on the ethical issues surrounding this latest scandal and Tim Browns leadership tactics and styles while dealing with this crisis.
For the last four years California has seen record setting droughts. Despite this Nestle has continued to bottle and sell water from their plant in Sacramento California, draining up to 80 million gallons of water a year from Sacramento aquifers (Bacher, 2015). Due to this the bottling plant has become a target for a water coalition that has highlighted predatory water profiteering actions by Nestle in various cities and countries. These coalitions also point out the disastrous results on the environment and the mega profits that are being received at the cost of citizens and taxpayers. The coalition contends that Nestlé pays only 65 cents for each 470 gallons it pumps out of the ground – the same rate as an average residential water user. But the company can turn the area’s water around, and sell it back to Sacramento at mammoth profits (Bacher, 2015).
The CEO of Nestle Tim Brown is defending Nestles