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Nestle is being sued over the origins of Poland Spring Water:
Nestle's marketing and sales of Poland Spring water has been "a colossal fraud perpetrated against American consumers," 11 people claim in a federal class action. Filing their suit Tuesday in Connecticut, where Nestle is based, the lead plaintiffs are from the Nutmeg State as well as New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. They say they would not have paid a premium for the water had they known it did not actually come from eight purported natural springs in Maine.
Rather than being "100% Natural Spring Water," the "products all contain ordinary groundwater that defendant collects from wells it drilled in saturated plains or valleys where the water table is within a few feet of the earth's surface," lead plaintiff Mark J. Patane says in the complaint. "The vast bulk of that groundwater is collected from Maine's most populous counties in southwestern Maine, only a short distance from the New Hampshire border," the complaint continues.
As required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, all bottled spring water must be collected either at the source of a naturally occurring spring or from a well that draws from a natural spring. "In hydro-geological parlance, all such well water must be 'hydraulically connected' to a genuine spring," the complaint states. But the class says that's not the case for defendant Nestle Waters North America's eight sites in Maine.
People will pay for water in a bottle?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2017, @03:08AM (3 children)
I never have, never will pay for drinking water.
I'm used to run my own rain water collection and filtering (from dust and dirt from the roof).
Always 100% good, clean, free water.
Only the stupid pay for drinking water.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2017, @03:42AM
Mhm, now try doing it in, say, New York City. Or somewhere where there is acid rain. Or somewhere where it's illegal to collect rain [accuweather.com].
The stupid one is you, Mr. "everyone is in the exact same situation as me".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2017, @05:33AM
>,,,and filtering (from dust and dirt from the roof).
Is your filtering good enough to take care of the bird/squirrel/etc poop on the roof (and accompanying bacteria)? Or maybe the local critters have been trained to go elsewhere??
(Score: 2) by ledow on Sunday August 20 2017, @11:47AM
I live in a city. As do the vast majority of the world's populations.
If you're lucky you have a roof / garden / surface area of your own, you could do something.
If not, you are immediately prevented from doing this from the outset (unless you want to go around licking your windows).
If you have a roof of your own, you have to divert the guttering or rig up some collecting occupying the same surface area.
If you are lucky enough to live in a rainy area, sure you might be able to always have a barrel full of water.
Otherwise, you're going to have a drought of drinking water PRECISELY when you need it most (summer).
Additionally, you HAVE paid for drinking water - you've done your own collection and filtering, storage and movement of that water. It's not free. Not saying it couldn't be cheap but it's certainly not free (in terms of effort if anything).
Let's hope you don't tell people to do this who have lead-lined roofs, though.
There's a reason that tap water exists, and is considered a vital utility in most countries. I can literally sue my council for failing to provide me with clean tap water. Bottled water - that's different, that's somewhat pretension, although in places where you don't have tap water, you need bottled water, so it does have a purpose.
But though you might be fortunate enough to have enough land and know-how to collect and filter this stuff, at your own effort and responsibility, that doesn't immediately translate across the globe. Hell, it wouldn't even translate to London. You wouldn't WANT to be using water scraped off anything open to the open air, and that's if you could afford to own enough surface area of your own to even do so.
Or you can just turn on a tap, drink it, have a bath in it, water your garden (if you have one) with it.
Additionally: Go look at the proper camping water filters, the ones that truly kill the shit in the water, that you can use on a puddle. They are expensive and short-lived and not as effective as you might hope if you're drinking water. Even boiling water is no guarantee whatsoever (autoclaves work at 220+ degrees C for a reason, that's what you need to actually kill stuff). Just because it fell out of the sky doesn't mean it's clean.