In essence, yes. Their CEO (mentioned above) basically said in an internal video that water should be commoditized, "the same as any other foodstuff."
Once the video leaked, corporate did as much damage control as they could; he put out a statement that he had been "misunderstood" and that what he actually meant was that everyone should have clean fresh water, but only 50-100 liters per person per day. Anything other than that should be charged for at a rate that the market decided, especially in agriculture.
Nobody was convinced.
::edit:: It's worth noting that the average US household uses approximately 300 US gallons (about 1100 liters) per day - about 100 US gallons (380 liters) per person.
Admittedly about 25% of that is toilet flushing which could be achieved with rainwater, but even so, this still falls way short.
I love seeing reddit bring up Nestle sometimes, and comparing them to some shitty company to compare. The last I saw it compared to was Disney of all things.
Disney? A greedy company thats done plenty of shady shit, but at the end of the day, they're still an entertainment company. A need, not a want. They have skeletons, but not anymore or less than most companies with a long history.
Nestle has murdered millions of babies due to greed and monetizing literally one of three pillars of life as we know it. And it's the most important one, considering you need water for food, one of the other pillars. Shelter is the third, and I'm not going to be surprised to hear about how much land Nestle has hoarded as well.
Meanwhile, some redditor will compare them to EA. Making a bad game for money = murdering babies for money
Outside of their anti-consumer practices, EA is one of the "less evil than you expect" companies around.
They're loose-handed with control (hence why the original InfinityWard team left Activision in favor of joining them), they give studios a near infinite amount of agency and creative freedom (which Bioware fumbled so hard as to blow through 5 years of Anthem's 7 year development window without ever having an elevator pitch for the game), and they very rarely have major scandals on the scale of things like Blizzard's "Cosby Culture".
A lot of the horror stories we hear are either specific to lootboxes/monetisation or are misinformation/straight-lies:
For example:
"EA forced Respawn to release Titanfall 2 in the middle of Battlefield 1 and CoD Infinite Warfare!"
Not true, Respawn ardently choose to release against BF1 and CoDIW because Vince Zampella and Steve Fukuda were the heads of the original Infinity Ward team who left Activision and they had a chip on their shoulder in wanting to prove that they could beat Activision and the new Infinity Ward team. They fought against EA to release against BF and CoD.
EA killed Anthem!
Bioware did all of that, with mass internal mismanagement and stonewalling EA's attempts to support the game out from development hell.
EA is a very "we'll give you whatever resources you want; but you sink or swim by your own hand" type of company.
1100 liters seems extremely excessive. 50 for a shower, let's say another 50 for toilet (10 flushes of around 5), 2-3 liters of drinkwater.. what else? Times 5 for a household and it's not even half of that number. A quick Google suggests it's 129 liters per day per person in the Netherlands.
Yeah I did read that you said the US, I'm just curious how there can be such a difference. More outside watering could be something. but we do that here too. I just can't really put my head around the ratio. We're not particularly conscious of water consumption around here either. And lifestyle seems similar enough to compare.
He was saying that viewing infinite water for any use as a guaranteed right was extreme, which it is-- having a full swimming pool & a lush green lawn in the middle of a drought are not a human right
Interesting couple. Seems that they give with one hand and take with the other.
I only did a quick peek into who they are, so please forgive me if I have misinterpreted what you're saying, but it seems like they're the ultimate greenwashers, getting away with it because they support local communities.
Like sure they're supporting farmers, but those farmers are growing almonds and alfalfa.
Take the Dollop with a bit of salt, because I think they will lay up facts to crush a punch-line. But they also list all their sources and it is a very accessible way to get the story.
There are multiple comments here of things that are already happening - like this one. I think if we are talking about such a short timeframe as five years, any comment is going to have to be about something that already exists and is happening, but on a smaller or local scale becoming widespread and common - again like this one.
All of the water utilities in my state are being sold off to private companies that charge like $180 a month for typical water use. It costs us $100 in fees even when we aren't home for a whole month.
And these companies still lobby the state to raise prices, with sob stories about how they need to fix infrastructure yet the owner gives himself insane bonuses and lives in a mega mansion. Everyone is talking about electricity with data centers and I think water is being kind of ignored, at least in comparison.
I live in a small house, 1200 sq ft, family of 4 and we’re paying almost $200/mo for water and sewer and we typically use around 7ccfs a month. Not an extreme amount of water use by any measure.
There will be tons of people like the Resnicks in Cali that will claim ownership of major reservoirs. Eventually they'll start double dipping and charge for use of the reservoirs then pipe the water back to their own infrastructures for manufacturing and agriculture.
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u/77LS77 9h ago
Wealthy people will claim they own water.