Water is a natural resource which is vital for life to exist. Its obscene that someone would like to deprive someone else of it for monetary gain.

To me, the fact that it costs money to purify and deliver water does not mean that it is simply another commodity like ready-made lasagne or a tin of beans, rather there needs to be a guarantee that no-one, regardless of their income or situation should be without potable water.

I have no problem with companies selling bottled water (other than bemusement at the fact that there is a market for it) but that market must not be allowed to be the only way that people get their water.



As I've said many times on this forum, capitalism is a good servant but a very bad master.

It requires regulation because, if left to its own devices, the market becomes an antisocial entity.



Hence, I believe that access to potable water for drinking/hygiene is a human right.

double post

It does not follow that the solution to efficient use of water is to charge for it.



It isn't completely free anyway. We as consumers either pay water rates or are on a meter (as I am).



I do recall some years ago a water company trying to levy people with water butts a charge because they were catching water that belonged to the water company because it fell on their turf so to speak. That was thrown out and quite rightly so.



Of course while our UK water supply isn't free the from disruption due to drought and we waste a lot due to leakage, I doubt any political party could allow water companies to in effect ration water by price on the pretence this was an eco-friendlly initiative!

I've never got the milk thing. If the diet of the mother isn't very nutricious then surely formula milk will be better than the stuff she is producing herself?

That's certainly a possibility in some cases. Nestle don't work on that "possibility" though. They work to convert as many as possible to formula milk in order to sell their product - wether they need formula or not. In the West it's a problem, in the developing world it can be a catastrophic health issue as breast milk is sterile and contains vital antibodies against killer diseases we don't have to deal with anymore. Even here you have to sterilise bottles, teets etc. and we don't have cholora, diptheria, hepatitis etc. to contend with. Where is an African mother going to get clean water (can't use bottled water - not even here - contains too high a mineral content), etc.?

Not just that (if that's not bad enough anyway) ... but when Nestle's marketing leads people to believe that the bottle formula is way, way better than breast milk and the poor woman buys into the notion ... and then, because she is poor, she dilutes it too much, the kid ends up malnourished anyway.

She's trying to do the best by her child and it's not her fault that she's uneducated.







And ... and ... they changed the shell on Smarties.

Baastards.

Stop using potable water to flush sewage into the drains, wash clothes with detergents....there are a great many ways we could reduce our water usage.



We even water golf courses, sports fields etc. with potable water, it's insane.

Problem is, people are just so used to it.



The hotel that my wife works at has its own water supply from springs in the grounds, they use that water in some of the toilets and get complaints that the toilets have a brown stain around the water line, its not the obvious, its the ground water thats doing it and it cant be scrubbed off - they also use it in the jacuzzi's and the swimming pool (after its been tested every day) and get complaints that there is sometimes a very faint brown tinge to it - the water comes off the Yorkshire moors, so yes, it will have some trace elements that get through the filters in it but they are being "Green" and then guests whine about it on Trip Advisor.



We're too soft.

You'll get no disagreement from me about that, way too soft on way too many important things, and yet way to hard on trivial things.

Absolutely agree with you on this.



I often work in a new building that uses 'brown' water to flush the toilets etc. It's extraordinary how many people think, on first seeing that, that it's unhealthy/bad.



It makes absolute sense.

Futher proof of just how caring and sharing Nestlé are:



[url=http://action.sumofus.org/a/nestle-nigella-sativa/?sub=twNestlé try to patent nigella sativa worldwide[/url