Foreign Corporations Extracting UK Freshwater To Sell In Bottles

Huge foreign conglomerates like Coca-Cola, Nestle Waters, Sources Alma and Highland Spring are now extracting billions of litres of freshwater from aquifers around Britain to sell as bottled water, it has been revealed.

A freedom of information request by the Guardian found that Coca-Cola extracts the largest amount of resources of any drinks brand in England, with a permit to drain 1.59 billion litres per year from boreholes in Sidcup, Kent. It also has permits in place to extract 377 million litres for bottled water brands Abbey Well and Glaceau Smartwater from Morpeth, Northumberland.

In Scotland, meanwhile, one of the biggest players is Highland Spring, owned by Bahrain-born billionaire businessman Mahdi Al Tajir, also Scotland’s richest man.

The brand has a licence to abstract 1.85 billion litres per year from the Speyside Glenlivet estate in the Scottish Highlands, although it says that it only takes out 32 per cent of the permissible amount and it hasn’t detected any discernible impact on the environment as a result of this abstraction.

Although trade organisation the Natural Source Water Association says that abstraction for bottled water only covers a small fraction of total resources extracted in Britain, the issue – according to Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN special rapporteur for water – is that these companies are taking the best quality drinking water there is, putting public supply at risk.

In times of shortage, for example, people could potentially run out of drinking water and be forced to purchase bottles from foreign conglomerates who have extracted these resources from the local population’s own territory.

This was seen in Ludchurch in Wales back in the summer of 2022, where farmers found themselves facing water restrictions while Nestle was still permitted to extract millions of litres from local sources.

Unsustainable abstraction

While the bottled water industry may use comparatively small amounts of water compared to other sectors, such as mining or agriculture, the fact remains that it is still part of a significant problem, with approximately 47 trillion litres of water licensed for abstraction from natural reserves around England each year.

Over-abstraction is one of the key issues that the UK faces where the water crisis is concerned, with one in five surface waters now affected by this. Environmental protections in other catchments, meanwhile, have left many local regions with no water to spare for further abstraction.

With climate change increasing the risk of extreme weather events like drought and flooding, both of which will naturally have an impact on water quality and quantity, and pollution also having a lasting effect on waterways, implementing more sustainable water abstraction measures will become evermore important as time goes on.

It’s estimated that abstraction will need to be reduced by 800 million litres per day by 2027 in England and 1.4 billion litres per day by 2050 in order to protect the natural environment, particularly chalk streams.

However, this will need to happen as demand for water resources increases in the future, with the Committee for Climate Change predicting that demand for water in England will exceed supply by between 1.1 billion and 3.1 billion litres per day by the 2050s.

As part of the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan, work will be undertaken to ensure secure sustainable abstraction, protecting the water environment and supplying water to people and businesses.

Efforts are already underway, with 48 billion litres of water returned to the environment each year since 2008 via the Restoring Sustainable Abstraction programme.

Furthermore, 37 billion litres of water have been returned to chalk streams annually, while the risk that around 1.9 trillion litres could be abstracted through unused or underused permits has also been removed.

This will be taken further by working at catchment scale to understand local environment risks and develop joint solutions in collaboration with license holders to ensure that abstraction is carried out sustainably.

Previously unregulated activities such as trickle irrigation will also be included under abstraction licences, with the system modernised for abstractors by featuring it as part of the environmental permitting regulations.

How can businesses reduce their water abstraction levels?

If, as a business, you abstract water from ground or surface waters for your operations, you can help protect the environment by reducing the amount of water you use, of course, but also by changing the way in which your company operates across the board.

Looking at your supply chain as a whole can reveal a wide range of opportunities for reducing your water consumption, working with suppliers that are as keen as you are to promote water sustainability.

It can also be useful to have a water audit of your site carried out so you can see where you use water the most, allowing you to identify potential areas where savings could be made. If you’d like to find out more, get in touch with the SwitchWaterSupplier.com team today to see how we can help.