Nestle Waters’ CEO Counters Bottled Water Criticism

September 5, 2007
Nestle Waters’ CEO Counters Bottled Water Criticism
Kim Jeffery, president and CEO of Nestle Waters North America, has written an opinion piece for Hearst Newspapers countering recent criticism of the bottled water industry.

“Those who propose bans on bottled water don’t acknowledge that bottled water represents less than one percent of the municipal solid waste that ends up in landfills,” Jeffery writes. “Bottled water is only one beverage among hundreds that come in plastic containers.”

“We believe that if you drink a beverage from a container, bottled water is by far the best choice you can make,” writes Jeffery.

Jeffery points to Nestle’s new “ultra light Eco-Shape bottles” which are 30 percent lighter than most other half-liter bottles. “They will save the environment 65 million pounds of plastic in 2008, and they take less energy to make,” jeffery writes. “Because we make all of our own packaging at Nestle Waters, we also save the environmental cost of shipping 160,000 truckloads of empty bottles into our plants annually, saving over 6 million gallons of fuel.”

San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom recently issued an executive order prohibiting city departments from buying bottled water