Nestle Waters North America is working on a new bottled water commitment for Flint, Mich.
According to MLive, a Nestle spokesman said the company remains “committed to helping the people of Flint, and we are actively working with the help center to determine their needs in 2019.”
The announcement comes after Nestle received criticism for new radio and television began airing in Flint and other markets. According to MLive, the commercial shows cases of Ice Mountain being delivered to the city while a narrator says, “some people have forgotten about Flint, but Nestle Waters never did.”
Nestle has provided weekly water donations to help centers operated in the city by the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan since May 2018. According to MLive, the donations have equaled 1.6 million individual bottles of water per week.
According to MLive, the company started providing the donations in Oct. 2015. Nestle was part of a coalition that has provided the equivalent of 6.5 million bottles of water to Flint Community Schools.
The company pays $200 per facility each year to withdraw millions of gallons of Michigan water, according to MLive.
Nestle said it is working towards continuing the water deliveries until next year, but some water activists aren’t buying it. Nayyirah Shariff of Flint Rising said the new ad does not line up with reality.
“They haven’t been supporting the needs of Flint residents … Flint is being exploited for profit,” Shariff said to MLive.
According to MLive, Nestle released a statement saying in part they expect its Flint ad to run for the next month.
“This is the first of three ads; the other will illustrate our commitments beyond Flint,” the statement to MLive read. “We engaged a number of community members and stakeholders in the process of creating the ads, and we’re proud of the work that we do every day to support many communities across the state.”
