Nestles.."Poland Spring" is common groundwater- new suit alleges: Mercury News:

[Stuart G]

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/19/nestles-poland-spring-is-common-groundwater-new-suit-alleges-2/

By Patricia Hurtado, (c) 2017, Bloomberg

Nestle’s Poland Spring Water unit has duped American consumers into paying premium prices for ordinary ground water that’s pumped from some of Maine’s most populated areas, rather than from natural springs as the company advertises, according to a lawsuit.

While Poland Springs says its water bottles contain “100 percent natural spring water” from a source deep in Maine’s woods, the complaint filed August 15 in federal court in Connecticut claims that Nestle Waters North America has bottled well water that doesn’t meet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of spring water. The suit, which includes claims for breach of contract and fraud, also seeks unspecified damages for violations of state laws including New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts.

None of Poland Spring Water’s eight purported “natural spring” sites contains a genuine spring under FDA rules, according to the suit. “One or more” of the company’s largest volume groundwater collection sites –which the suit says supplies up to 99 percent of the water in Poland Spring Water products — are near a current or former refuse pit, landfill or petroleum dump site, the plaintiffs say.

“To consumers, ‘spring water’ from a naturally occurring spring signifies purity and high quality and commands a premium price compared to defendant’s non-spring drinking water products or filtered tap water,” according to the proposed class-action suit filed on behalf of consumers who’ve bought the water. “To illicitly capture that premium, defendant, since it began selling the Poland Spring brand in 1993, has bottled common groundwater and illegally mislabeled it as ‘100 percent Natural Spring Water.'”

[CrispyQ]

1. STOP BUYING BOTTLED WATER!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/business/nestle-michigan-water.html

snip...

Nestlé can pump more than 130 million gallons of water a year from a well near this northwestern Michigan town to bottle and sell. It’s a big business: Last year, for the first time, bottled water outsold carbonated soft drinks in the United States.

And now Nestlé wants more. It has applied to increase its pumping allowance at the well by 60 percent. The application, which the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is expected to rule on within months, has catalyzed opposition in part because of what Nestlé pays for most of the water it bottles: nothing. That is, it pays only a $200 annual permit fee to pump from wells it owns (like this one) or leases.

snip...

The scale of Nestlé’s operation in this sparsely populated region about 180 miles northwest of Detroit is immense. The company packages an average of 4.8 million bottles of water a day — more than 3,000 a minute — with all lines running at a plant about 40 miles south of Evart, said David Sommer, the factory manager.

[murielm99]

2. I have a Brita pitcher

and a reusable bottle. Who needs to buy all that crap?

[Stuart G]

3. Bottled Water might just be..the beggest con job in retail history..!!

Consumer Reports did a study on this about ten to twelve years ago. It concluded and described what a con job this was. And..it rated water around the country..Water coming out of taps, in New York City was rated tops because it came from areas of New York State where the water was clean and naturally filtered. That water in their taps was rated much higher than the bottled water sold in stores.