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BlueTriton – North America’s biggest bottled water firm – it will and its entire operations in Ontario.

While the company , its retreat is a strong indication of the changing fortunes of the bottled water industry, both domestically and globally. It also illustrates the , .

social conflicts over water commodification. My current work focuses on bottled water and asks what its rapid growth means for the .

Bottled water is the world’s . It has grown rapidly into a global market led by major food and beverage corporations. However, bottled water also has a host of and impacts.

I am particularly interested in how the growth of the bottled water industry has generated diverse and surprisingly effective opposition movements.

These movements fall into two broad categories. On one hand are campaigns challenging the industry’s groundwater extraction in specific places. On the other are efforts to reduce the consumption of single-use bottled water and increase access to public tap water.

The exit from Ontario by BlueTriton – a private equity consortium that purchased Nestlé’s North American bottled water business in 2021 – is a clear victory for opponents that reflects the impact of both of these strands of opposition.

Opposing bottling

In 2000, the Swiss food and beverage giant a bottling plant in Aberfoyle, Ont. Included in the sale were two water wells and – the highest volume of water extraction rights of any bottler in the province.

In 2016, that would have allowed it to expand to 6.2 million litres per day.

Ontario is dependent on sub-surface groundwater for nearly all its water uses, including municipal water supply. Opposition to Nestlé’s water extraction operations emerged when the grassroots advocacy group was established in 2007 and expanded when was founded in 2015. Their efforts were supported by national organizations including the .

and 2016 highlighted tensions over the region’s finite groundwater.

. This contrast enabled Nestlé’s opponents . Nestlé relative to total groundwater use.

More recently, water advocates have . . In this case, activists have framed Nestlé’s and BlueTriton’s water extraction as an issue of , .

These campaigns attracted significant media attention, which – – made water bottling into a volatile political issue at the provincial level. An opinion poll (sponsored by opponents) found that . Even Ontario’s Premier Kathleen Wynne .

The result was substantial policy change. Ontario’s government for commercial water bottlers and . These moves drew .

Even so, Doug Ford’s Conservative government extended the moratorium until 2021, when it announced . Among the reforms was a , which doomed BlueTriton’s expansion to a third site.

Similar campaigns have also helped to stop water bottling by these companies elsewhere, and .

Reclaiming the tap

Meanwhile, another set of movements has challenged bottled water from the consumer end.

Initiatives to “reclaim the tap” involve , and other institutions banning bottled water sales on their premises. At the same time, activists have pressured local authorities to by installing in public spaces, .

This has taken place alongside efforts to about tap water quality.

These end-user strategies have also been energized by a . .

Canada is the epicentre of this phenomenon. Since 2008, , , and dozens of smaller communities have banned government purchases of bottled water and its sale on public property. Most have also installed refilling stations and promoted tap water consumption.

Hundreds of cities worldwide have followed suit. Similar policies have been passed in , , , , , , and .

Some of these efforts are co-ordinated internationally. For example, the links more than 80 municipalities in eight countries that have enacted such policies.

These initiatives have substantial reach. I estimate that nearly 14 million Canadians, and more than 200 million people worldwide, live in jurisdictions that have banned or restricted bottled water and expanded tap water access.

Moreover, and . These shifting patterns are stoking demand for convenient places to fill those bottles, and help users find the nearest free refill points.

Stalling growth

The cumulative impact of these governmental policies and the refilling movement is becoming apparent.

After more than four decades of steady growth, the volume of bottled water consumed per person is now stagnant or falling across the Global North, including , the United States , , and the .

Worldwide, per-capita consumption of packaged water is in coming years.

Industry market analyses have expressed deep concern about this sea change. A Nestlé sustainability manager recently stated that:

These factors influenced Nestlé’s 2021 decision to sell its North American bottled water business to BlueTriton. Its .

Now, BlueTriton too appears to have scaled back in closing its Ontario operations, as it faces increased costs, heightened regulation, falling demand and an inability to expand. All of these adverse conditions are due at least in part to the efforts of opposition movements.

This move, and the industry’s flagging fortunes, provide strong evidence that organized opposition and the public backlash against single-use plastic bottled water are having a major impact.