2020 Catholic Social Teaching Business Case Competition

Executive Summary
The CST Business Case Competition Executive Summary must be submitted to the CST elearn
site by 8 a.m. on Monday, March 9, 2020.

Team Name: Fixer Firm

Student(s): Team leader: Xavier Sanchez
Team member: Jonathan Ford
Team member: Nora Carr

1. Case Title: Nestle- The Damaging Water Bottle

 2. Background:

Henri Nestle developed a form of infant food in 1867 and his company merged with the Anglo-
Swiss Condensed Milk Company in 1905, which became what is now known as the Nestle
Group.  The company continued to grow after it was formed and by the end of World War I it
had 40 factories. In the 1970s the company diversified into pharmaceuticals and cosmetics,
during this time activist groups start to criticize the company and allege that their marketing of
infant food is unethical.  Nestle says that they now want to “further develop sustainable supply
chains in cocoa and coffee” (The Nestle Company History). 

Although Nestle tries to present itself to the public as a family-friendly sustainable company,
much of the public does not see it that way.  Nestle owns over 2,000 food, beverage, healthcare
nutrition, skin health, and pet care brands. In recent years, Nestlé’s water bottle brands have
been under great scrutiny.  Nestle is the largest bottled water company in the world and
continues to take millions of gallons of free water from the San Bernardino National Forest,
Strawberry Creek, and other freshwater supplies in California.  California regulators told Nestle
“they had no right to much of what they’d take in the past” (Wilson 1). Nestle told the Desert
Sun they are “legally entitled to every drop, and ‘sustainably collecting water at volumes
believed to be in compliance with all laws and permits at this time’” (Wilson 1). 

In 2018, Nestle siphoned 45 million gallons of spring water from Strawberry Creek in California
to bottle it under the Arrowhead water brand (Perkins 1).  For the ability to bottle, this water
Nestle paid the U.S. Forest Service and state of California almost nothing. They were required
to pay around $2,000 for a new federal permit in 2018 (Wilson 1) but that barely registered as an
expense for the company which made sales exceeding $7.8 billion worldwide for just Nestle
Water.  Many critics and activists have categorized Nestle as a ‘predatory’ water company
because they target struggling communities, exaggerate job promises, and use cheap strategies
such as donating to the local boy or girl scouts so they can win over small-town officials who
hold the access to valuable springs (Perkins 2). Nestle Waters owns 51 bottled water brands and
presents itself as an eco-friendly company wanting to save the world’s fresh water supply to the
public and spend millions annually on lobbying at the federal and state leaves to maintain a good
relationship between the company and politicians.  Nestle should not be able to take millions of
gallons of fresh water each year to bottle it and resell it especially a state which struggles with
droughts so often.  

3. CST Principles:

Catholic Social Thought is the body of doctrine developed by the Catholic Church on matters of
social justice, involving issues of poverty and wealth, economics, social organizations and the
role of the state. This history of Catholic Social Thought dates back to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891
encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum, which advocated for economic distribution and condemned
both capitalism and socialism. We believe in this specific case for Nestle is going against
common good and stewardship of the C.S.T. principles.

The first principle, common good, flows from the idea that persons typically live in a
community. With that, all individuals have the right to secure the basic necessities of life—food,
shelter, education. Under common, it looks at the stakeholders of decisions and how it related to
them. Nestle has chosen to go in and out of various areas across the globe to extract water to fill
their water bottle with a total disregard of others that are at stake. This makes it extremely hard
to live for many as they can hardly access clean water and inexpensive water.

The second principle is stewardship. Stewardship captures the responsibility of every party—
including companies—to contribute to the care of the earth. Under stewardship, it recognized the
environment as a common pool of abundant resources. These resources should not to be
exploited for the benefit of a few or at the expense of future generations. Not only is Nestle
hurting people but hurting the environment. They continue to drain natural water sources,
leaving nearly no water behind which hurts the natural flow of the environment. Nestle is only
focusing on their bottom line in present time which leaves many without water and even those in
the future with little to work with.

4. Resolution:

The Fixer Firm has identified three major ideas to resolve the discontent people have with Nestle
which will help the people, the land, and continue to allow them to run their business. The three
are to take less water, make the prices of their bottles more accessible to other, and to construct
projects to benefit the communities they take from.

Nestle has come in and out of areas all over the world draining water systems at their benefit of
making profit. This has hurt those areas and makes it extremely difficult to access water. Those
citizens should be able to still have the option to get water from natural sources.

While Nestle will continue to take from the land, the must recognize that there are few sources of
water for those areas and many of the people are dependent on those sources. Nestle should not
overprice their water bottles to the extent the locals could not afford to purchase.

The damage has already been done by Nestle in many areas and they should recognize their
wrong and find ways to resolve issues. They should fund studies or programs about the
environment in which they could find the balance of continuing their business without hurting
the people in which they take from.