Bottled water is an approach towards clean drinking water and adopted by several international companies in the world. Due to environmental pollution and increasing rate of water pollution in the world, companies are providing bottled water that ensures clean and safe drinking water delivery to its consumers. Nestlé is one among these companies which are providing bottled water all over the world. Nestlé is an international brand and considered as most successful water providing company in the world today. It was established in 1867 by Henri Nestlé, who was a pharmacist. The logo of Nestlé is also based on its name and its meaning promotes the health effects, security, family love, and nourishment (“History of Nestle”, 2018). Nestle has more than 280,000 employees worldwide and spread its nest all over the world in more than 86 countries. The products of Nestlé include bottled water, chocolates, cereals, frozen items, and similar food products.
The company’s tagline based on health factors and it is working to ensure health safety and provide quality products to its consumers. Its strategies include the innovative measures with a renovation that promotes the best quality products. It works to maintain its reputation and for the improvement of its products with time. Its long-term goals are specified and not based on the sacrifice of any short-term performance. The purpose of Nestlé is to provide best quality products and satisfy their needs in the best manner, also to provide products according to the needs of consumers throughout their lives.
The Nestlé Company follows the strategy of decentralization and in every country, it creates its branches. These branches are responsible for the running of its market business. Its tagline of business is “Thinking globally, acting locally” means that it provides products according to needs of people in every country. The best measure that is adopted by the Nestlé Company is that it works on sustainable measures and ensures environmental sustainability through its products.
At the start of 21st century, the company had faced several global issues. According to a documentary, “Bottled Life – The Truth about Nestlé’s Business with Water” created by Res Gehringer, the Nestlé Company is the money making business as it is working on its water bottled system only to produce business and not for the promotion of health factors. Gehringer added the United States of America, Pakistan, and Nigeria in the documentary that showed the business strategies adopted by the famous Nestlé Company. It includes several unethical considerations that are adopted by the Nestlé Company such as negative impacts on the stakeholders, expensive prices of bottled water, and contaminated water that are used by the company in the country Pakistan (Bottled Life: Nestle’s Business With Water, 2012).
The Nestlé Company started their bottled water business, in Sacramento, CA and faced different issues such as the atmosphere could be disturbed by the production of bottled water. But there were several other issues raised that showed the company was not caring about the health factor but only caring about making profits. The spread of bottled water in the Asian countries provided the people opportunity to access to clean drinking water, but the most countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are the ones that are facing poverty issues and most people could not afford expensive water like Nestlé (Bottled Life: Nestle’s Business With Water, 2012).
In the documentary of Gehringer, Pakistan is targeted in the case as its people faced several issues regarding the bottled water of Nestlé. The people faced issues due to its expensive price as the bottled water was unaffordable for them. In many southern areas, where Nestlé launched its products, people do not have approach to safe and clean drinking water, but the company did not consider this fact and does not lower its prices for the people who need clean water but does not have money (Bottled Life: Nestle’s Business With Water, 2012).
Many people get sick in the areas in which the Nestlé Company was present. The village requested Nestlé to provide them clean water piped in but it refused their request because in that way the company could not get any kind of profit. As the point of view of stakeholders, Nestlé did wrong and used unethical measures such as the people who got sick due to dirty water and for them purchasing Nestlé was the matter of their life and death. The bottled water of Nestlé also lies under the category of unethical consideration as it impacted negatively by the concept of individualism (Lewis, 2014).
People who want to purchase water for their family do whatever it took, to provide safe drinking water to their families, although water is a basic necessity of every human being. The actions of Nestlé were not ethical as these are opposite to the ethical measures. The pure and clean drinking water was unaffordable for the most people in the South Asian countries because they are not able to afford their basic need due to the expensive price rate of Nestlé Company. Nestlé not only avoids the ethical considerations of social responsibilities but also avoided business ethics and justice aspects (Lewis, 2014).
In result of the documentary, Nestlé did not accept all the provided facts and stated that it is factually incorrect. Nestlé refused to admit that it was taking groundwater from the farmers of Punjab in the country Pakistan. The company did monitor work and allowed by the government system of the country.
In the sustainability report of Nestlé 2012, it showed that it is working under the logo of shared value that includes nutrition, water, and rural development in the world. It includes the progress of the company and also several facts that it is working to promotes nutrition measures and quality products all over the world. The nutritious products of Nestlé are helpful to deliver the health measures and the company is trying many ways to make their products affordable for the consumers (Godelnik, 2013).
The company is using scarce water resources and protects it with efficient measures by several manufacturing measures and several distributive measures. Nestlé is also working to develop rural areas in the world and making efforts to develop the farmers by supporting them. The company is working on the malnutrition and obesity measures and making its products healthier enough that do not increase the obesity level in the people. In 2012, Nestlé spent more than $1 billion on the research and development process.
The contributions of the company are increasing every year in the area of nutritious products availability and quality. The health considerations also increase every year as it increases 32 percent in 2012 as compared to 2011. It is showing that the company is contributing positively to the global environment and helping the promotion of healthy, effective and nutritious products.
The purpose of the company is to provide better and quality products and to contribute to the healthy lifestyle of its consumers. The company is goal oriented and decided some commitments that will be achieved by the company till 2020. The company is favoring the sustainable development goals and wants to add contributions to it. The ambitions include promotion of healthy lives that include 50 million children, the development of resilient communities including 30 million communities, and promote sustainable measures for the security of future generations based on the fact that the company will use such methods that will not impact zero percent to the global environment.
The company is providing healthy and effective measures that ensure sustainability in its every procedure, manufacturing or production procedures. The company is making efforts to achieve its ambitions before 2020. The progress includes the products quality measures, numerous jobs opportunities, sustainable measures in every step of product production, waste disposal measures that ensures environmental sustainability, and best methods to provide most healthy products to the people. The major achievement of the company includes sustainability measures that ensure that the company is not providing any degradation to the global environment and consistently working to promotes best healthy and quality products with the best sustainable measures (Nestle, 2016). The company surely faced several issues in the past, such as several unethical considerations but the company tried hard to get over all these allegations that impacted the repute of the company negatively. Moreover, the company is now striving hard to provide best products to its customers and also adopted numerous measures that ensure environmental sustainability and health benefits.
References
Nestle. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.nestle.com/asset-library/documents/library/documents/corporate_social_responsibility/nestle-in-society-summary-report-2016-en.pdf
Bottled Life: Nestle’s Business With Water. (2012). Retrieved from http://putlockers.plus/watch/EdZXb6xp-bottled-life-nestle-s-business-with-water.html
Lewis, A. (2014). Nestlé Pure Life leaves Pakistani’s Desperate for Thirst. Businessethicscases.blogspot.com. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from http://businessethicscases.blogspot.com/2014/11/nestle-pure-life-leaves-pakistanis.html
Godelnik, R. (2013). Nestlé’s 2012 Sustainability Report: Creating Shared Value for the Long Term. Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://www.triplepundit.com/2013/04/nestle/
History of Nestle. (2018). Nestle.com. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://www.nestle.com/aboutus/history/nestle-company-history#tab-2006
