From foodwatch Germany:
Aldi, Red Bull, Nestlé – corporations are profiting from our groundwater. foodwatch is investigating who is pumping out how much. And encountering unexpected resistance: Read about the absurd pretexts authorities are using to try and fob us off.
Things are going well at Aldi: In Treuchtlingen, Bavaria, the discount supermarket pumps 250 million liters of groundwater from the ground every year. Free of charge. Bottled in PET bottles, the water is then sold in supermarkets throughout Germany, for example as mineral water from the “Altmühltaler Quelle” spring. At Aldi, bottled water can easily cost 99 times the price of the same amount of tap water.
Tap water in Germany is not only cheaper – it’s also safe. Nevertheless, every supermarket has entire shelves full of bottled water. No wonder: Aldi and other big retailers make a lot of money from bottled groundwater. “I don’t care, I don’t buy it anyway,” you might be thinking. Unfortunately, that’s not true.
Because groundwater is a common good – and is becoming increasingly scarce. Already, every second German district is struggling with structural or acute groundwater stress. So surely someone is making sure that the extraction of public groundwater for private profits doesn’t get out of control – right?
