Nestle Waters North America Honored For Using Less Plastic

The Greenwich-based Nestle Waters North America, which owns the bottled water brand Poland Spring, has won an award for reducing the amount of plastic in its bottles. WNPR’s Nancy Cohen reports.

Nestle Waters North America has received the 2010 Gold Connecticut Quality Improvement Award for using 25% less plastic in its half liter bottle. CEO Kim Jeffery says in 2006, the company first reduced the plastic in each bottle from 15 to 12.5 grams. And most recently it cut it down again to a little over 9 grams. Jeffery says when he first challenged his engineers to reduce the plastic in the bottles it was not for environmental reasons.

“The first iteration of that package came out as a result of my drive to lower cost, but the serendipity nature of this was that it also answered the question of 'what are you doing to reduce your packaging?' And we’ve just been going on from there. It’s a combination of cost savings for sure, but it’s also the right thing to do from an environmental standpoint."

Critics of the bottled water industry have called on consumers to give up the bottle entirely and drink only tap water. They say the bottles are made from fossil fuels which increases global warming. And they say the empties create too much solid waste.

For WNPR, I’m Nancy Cohen.