Re: Nestlé and bottled water industry
I am taken aback and curiously intrigued by the recent letter written by Mr. John R. Challinor in response to Albert Lacombe School’s stance on bottled water.
The reason for being so is as a Catholic social activist for social justice, by no means would I ever correlate my work for justice with a medieval notion of religious crusade as an attempt to convince people of my Catholicity through the "sin" of drinking bottled water. The bottled water campaign for Development and Peace is a thoroughly researched campaign that not only targets the lesser issue of increased landfills use, but a larger issue of water privatization and water for profit.
The theological principle behind the campaign is not the filling of landfills that Challinor is correct in quoting has significantly decreased although remains a huge environmental problem and risk, but a human issue of water becoming a struggle for democracy in developing and developed countries. The quoting of landfills distracts from the principle of the campaign. Privatization of water potentially limits a source — a human need — that human beings should have a right to.
What are the limitations on the right to life? Who decides these limitations? If a person does not have money to pay for water, should we go as far to say that person does not have a right to life? The question is really one of dignity and public access to water. It is a question of limiting the dignity of those who are poor because they are poor.
Nonetheless Challinor, the poor are human, the rich are human and all should have a basic right to life. Not all do. It is because of the workings of many large corporations not practising fair trade and ethical trading to peasant farmers and the common person who just wants a quick buck to stay alive that they do not. I have witnessed this myself in Latin America through mission as well as locally as people struggle to pay their water bills.
This is not a developing country issue, but rather one that we face locally. The Catholic Church roots all activism on the dignity of the human person and love for neighbour, not false statistics and “the rhetorical flourishes of a religious crusade.” This is laughable. Shall we get into the argument of NestlĂ© and its cocoa? I am shocked to see such a distortion of the facts by a major corporation.
Brittney White, St. Albert
