Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For

In rural Mecosta County, Mich., sits a near-windowless facility with a footprint about the size of Buckingham Palace. It’s just one of Nestlé’s roughly 100 bottled water factories in 34 countries around the world.

ILLUSTRATION: SILJA GÖTZ FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

Inside, workers wear hairnets, hard hats, goggles, gloves, and earplugs. Ten production lines snake through the space, funneling local spring water into 8-ounce to 2.5-gallon containers; most of the lines run 24/7, each pumping out 500 to 1,200 bottles per minute. About 60 percent of the supply comes from Mecosta’s springs and arrives at the factory via a 12-mile pipeline. The rest is trucked in from neighboring Osceola County, about 40 miles north. “Daily, we’re looking at 3.5 million bottles potentially,” says Dave Sommer, the plant’s 41-year-old manager, shouting above the din.

Silos holding 125 tons of plastic resin pellets provide the raw material for the bottles. They’re molded into shape at temperatures reaching 400F before being filled, capped, inspected, labeled, and laser-printed with the location, day, and minute they were produced—a process that takes less than 25 seconds. Next, the bottles are bundled, shrink-wrapped onto pallets, and picked up by a fleet of 25 forklifts that ferry them to the plant’s warehouse or loading docks. As many as 175 trucks arrive every day to transport the water to retail locations in the Midwest. “We want more people to drink water, keep hydrated,” Sommer says. “It would be nice if it were my water, but we just want them to drink water.”

Read the Bloomberg Businessweek story By Caroline Winter - “Nestlé Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For.”

A chance to make a statement

Some hope the new Shepparton Art Museum will make more than an artistic statement, but also provide a shining example of green building design.

The landmark SAM to be built on the shores of Victoria Park Lake has the potential to become a best practice showcase for sustainable buildings in the region, according to a local environment group.

Regional change: The Goulburn Valley Environment
Group hopes the new Shepparton Art Museum at
Victoria Park Lake can be a statement of change in the region.

The estimated two-year build for the $35 million, five-storey facility is set to start next year.

And Goulburn Valley Environment Group president John Pettigrew said some see the building, hoped to be an iconic, postcard entrance to the city from the south, as being ‘‘a statement of change in this region’’.

He said the building could be more than a scene-setting piece of building design, but also a way to promote best practices.

‘‘A statement building, that we are ready to take next step . . , to adapt to a changing climate, to changing market conditions.

‘‘We’ve always seen the SAM building as an opportunity to make a statement.’’

The president was unsure whether opportunities still existed for commentary about sustainable design features, adding the community may well be ‘‘living on trust that those involved in it, have committed as much as possible to those outcomes we think (are) important’’.

‘‘(We’re) keen that SAM is a standout building . . . that we look back on and say, ‘Yeah there wasn’t too many mistakes there . . . they did a pretty good job when took into account the energy requirements’,’’ he said.

Mr Pettigrew understood certain requirements were necessary to protect assets in an art museum, presenting ‘‘limits to what you can do to cut down energy’’.

‘‘We understand in a building like that you can’t necessarily go as far as you would like.

‘‘When you can’t do that, it’s critical that the energy used is renewable energy.

‘‘They’re the sort of things we’ve been keen to get incorporated into the new SAM building,’’ he said.

Mr Pettigrew said it could be possible for off site energy generation for such facilities.

By Thomas Moir on today’s Shepparton News - “A chance to make a statement."