Ontario Must Make Moratorium on Water Bottling Permanent
The Council of Canadians is available to comment about the Government of Ontario’s proposal to extend the moratorium on new permits for bottled water production facilities until next October, four years since the moratorium was first enacted.
Council of Canadians supporters have sent more than 10,000 messages to Premier Ford and Minister Jeff Yurek calling for a permanent moratorium and phase-out of existing permits. Extending the moratorium until October 2020 is delaying the inevitable decision and allows corporations to take advantage of loopholes to continue extracting water. Action is needed now.
“Nestlé’s permits expired in 2016. Since then they have extracted enough water from Aberfoyle, Ontario to fill 3.8 billion plastic bottles. Stacked on top of one another, they would reach to the moon and back,” says Mark Calzavara, Regional Organizer with the Council of Canadians. “Ontario needs to take bold action to protect precious community groundwater sources throughout our province, which are already under extreme stress from the climate emergency, population growth and over-extraction.”
The bottled water industry produces an enormous amount of plastic waste that ends up clogging landfills and oceans. Only about half of plastic bottles in Ontario are properly recycled.
Polling conducted by the Council of Canadians last year revealed that 82 percent of people in Ontario want the provincial government to permanently stop issuing permits for extracting groundwater to sell as bottled water.
MORE INFO
The Council of Canadians, founded in 1985, is a grassroots-based social action organization, mobilizing a network of 60 chapters across the country and over 150,000 supporters from coast-to-coast-to-coast.
Through our campaigns we advocate for clean water, fair trade, green energy, public health care, and a vibrant democracy. We educate and empower people to hold our governments and corporations accountable.
The Council of Canadians is a registered non-profit organization and does not accept money from corporations or governments.
