The supply will not be replenished
until the following day at the earliest.
This is the case because although
the workers’ settlement is located
just a few hundred yards away from
the facility where 282,000 liters of
water are bottled every day, there is
no public access to the water for the
families there. At least not anymore,
since Swiss food corporation Nestlé
acquired the drinking water licence
for the South African village. In the
Nestlé factory, however, fresh water
is always fl owing. Once packaged it
is branded as “Pure Life.” Lawrence
and his colleagues work in the water
bottling factory for 12 hours a day—from 6 in the morning till 6 at night.
They’re allowed just one 15-minute
break a day, plus 1 liter of water that
is packaged in two 0.5-liter bottles.
However, the Swiss company’s own
advice that everyone should drink at
least 2 liters of water per day to stay
healthy also applies to the workers.
“When a company like Nestle sells
the population its own groundwater
as ‘Pure Life’ at a high price and
asserts that the people’s well water
is undrinkable, that’s practically a
criminal act,” says Maude Barlow,
former UN Senior Advisor on Water.
Although 70% of Earth’s surface is
covered by water, 97.5% is salt water.Of the remaining 2.5% that would
theoretically be usable, at least two-
thirds is bound in glaciers, ice, and
marshes as well as in the form of
soil moisture and permafrost. This
means only a relatively small amount
of the fresh water on the planet is
drinkable—and that’s precisely the
reason a relentless distribution war
is raging on many levels.
In the background the water cartel
is pulling the strings, the secret ruler
of the water. The cartel is made up of
the so-called World Water Council,
a very powerful lobbyist group that
consists of 300 members from the
largest corporations in the world.“1.5 percent
of the water can
be given away
freely. The other
98.5 percent
should be left
to the market.”
Chairman and former CEO of Nestlé
Peter Brabeck-LetmatheMar 2017 30 ideasanddiscoveries.com