Nestle is a huge household brand. It would probably be untrue if I said even one person in this class had not been exposed to a Nestle product in their lifetime. Nesquick, Nestea, Nescafe, Kit Kat, Aero, Nestle pure life, and even international brands like Maggi. Every single day, we come across or even purchase Nestle products. Despite this, many people don’t know the horrible business practices Nestle has (or has had in the past). One of the most famous examples is detailed in this site that supports boycotting their products: http://www.babymilkaction.org/nestlefree

In short, Nestle changed their marketing strategy for their baby formula to target poor women in undeveloped countries. They claimed that their formula was healthier, when in reality, breastfeeding is as good as it gets.  The result was that their campaign directly contributed to the death of many babies in undeveloped countries because women lost the capacity to breastfeed (because they used formula instead) and they lacked access to clean resources to make the formula.

This has left a huge stain on the company’s reputation, much like how Nike’s involvement with sweatshops have left a lasting impression on their brand as well. However, in class we talked about how they were taking huge steps towards fixing their problem. I recently came across an article that was along the same lines, but for Nestle, found here: http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/waste_not/sustainable_brands/nestle_tesco_unilever_ceos_among_champions_123_determine

Nestle has joined Champions 12.3, a group of major institutions and companies including Unilever which we discuss quite a bit in class working to reduce food waste.  By joining Champions 12.3, they promise to advocate for innovation to reduce food and water waste, as well as ‘lead by example on reducing water and food waste’.

This begs the question, are they doing this to improve on the poor image of their brand regarding sustainability and CSR (for people who are aware of what they have done), or are they doing it because they really do want to help the world? A lot of activists may want to believe the former because ‘business are evil’ and because Nestle has had a ‘heartless’ reputation for a long time. However, there is evidence that they are making real contributions toward water and food waste problems.

For example, as shown in this article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-12/nestle-turns-milk-waste-into-water-as-california-drought-rages

Nestle is creating processes to extract the water byproduct (waste) from making their condensed milk. This is an example of integrating a green process into their operations. They’re taking an already ‘great product’, their condensed milk, and adding green to that by spending millions of dollars on a filter so they can collect that water.

This doesn’t make up for all the things that make up Nestle’s poor reputation, but it is definitely a huge leap forward for them. I for one am still very skeptical as I hate their business practices, but only time will tell us if they are genuine. I still think they’re a cutthroat company though.