Over the last few years, Corporate Accountability International members and activists like you have joined the Think Outside the Bottle call for our national parks. We’ve worked together to move parks to take leadership roles in conservation by ending the sale of bottled water and providing easy access to tap water. Together, we’re protecting the environment and sending the message that water, like our parks, is not for sale — and deserves our long-term investment.
As park after park goes bottle water free, it’s clear we’re gaining momentum–much to the bottled water industry’s chagrin.
Outrageously, the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) — the bottled water industry’s trade association and Nestlé’s mouthpiece in Congress — has managed to plant language into the House Interior and Environment Appropriations bill that would pad the profits of the bottled water industry at the expense of our parks and the environment.
Déjà vu
If this sounds like déjà vu, that’s because it is. Last summer, the bottled water industry launched an aggressive effort to curb the growing movement of parks that Think Outside the Bottle. IBWA lobbied members of Congress to sneak in a last-minute amendment to a budget bill that would have forbidden parks from using federal money to go bottled water free.
But almost half a million of you jumped into action. You reached out to your members of Congress — and we stopped IBWA in its tracks. National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis even publicly cited your messages as he defended bottled-water-free policies against the industry’s false claims.
We’ve stopped IBWA before, and we will stop IBWA again — with your help. Send a message to Congress: Say no to Nestlé and IBWA, and yes to bottled-water-free parks!
Members of the Appropriations Committee are slated to mark up the text of the bill any day now. This is our chance to stop IBWA, Nestlé, and the other water privateers by removing this language from the bill before it passes out of committee. We need a budget bill free of harmful riders like this one.
Will you join us in taking action? Tell your member of Congress: Don’t let IBWA stop our parks from going bottled water free!
