Leading international beverage companies Coca-Cola and Nestlé are both active in funding drinking water projects in developing countries.

At the Business for Social Responsibility conference [http://www.bsr.org/BSRConferences/2006/index.cfm ] in November 2006 in New York, CEO Neville Isdell, announced that Coca-Cola was supporting drinking water projects in Africa. In Mali the company was working with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and local women’s groups to install pumps and extend municipal water taps into outlying communities. Coca-Cola is also supporting a USAID project in Malawi to rehabilitate gravity-fed water systems and build new drinking water systems. In collaboration with CARE and UNICEF, the company has launched water access, safety and storage programmes for schools in Nyanza province and Nairobi in Kenya.

Isdell also said that Coca-Cola wanted to work with local communities in part because of its experience in India, where environmental activists have accused the company of depleting groundwater and selling contaminated beverages.

In Sri Lanka, Nestlé Lanka recently inaugurated two drinking water facilities at the Sandalanka District Hospital and Pannala National School, which are in the vicinity of the company’s Kurunegala Factory. The hygienic facilities are built by drilling deep bore wells and installing water tanks to store the clean water.

Related news: Philanthropy: Soros gives US$ 50 million to Millennium Villages project, Source Weekly, 10 Oct 2006

Web sites: Coca-Cola – Corporate Responsibility – Water ; Nestlé – Water

Source: AlertNet, 8 Nov 2006 ; Daily Mirror / OneWorld South Asia, 27 Nov 2006