Nestles. Please know what and who you support before giving them your moola. More than 40% of the world’s chocolate comes from Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) in Africa, where tens of thousands of children are estimated to be working in dangerous conditions on cocoa farms. Nestle uses cocoa harvested by slave labor, and only when Senator Thomas Harkin (D-Iowa) led an investigation and introduced legislation that would require chocolate sold in the US to be labeled “slave-free” did the company act. Nestle promised that by July 2005 they would find a way to certify chocolate as not having been produced by any underage, indentured, trafficked or coerced labor, but since then, they have achieved very little. Nestle’s bottled water business is also a major cause for concern. Nestle controls one-third of the US market and sells 70 different brand names of bottled water including Arrowhead, Deer Park, Perrier and Poland Spring. The company buys up pristine springs in some of the most beautiful natural spaces in America and builds huge factories on the sites, releasing pollution into the air and drawing enormous amounts of water out of the springs. And, while the company claims an environmentally friendly ethic, saying it would never harm an aquifer, that’s exactly what they have done in places like Mecosta County, Michigan, damaging the watershed with excessive withdrawals, reaping huge profits and leaving the locals to deal with the consequences.
Posted on: Wed, 07 May 2014 15:45:03 +0000