Bottled Water Industry Lends Its Support to Christchurch

Bottled Water Industry Lends Its Support to Christchurch

SYDNEY, March 3, 2011/ Medianet International-AsiaNet/ --

Water bottlers have leant their support to the earthquake devastated community of Christchurch.

"Small and large bottlers in Australia and New Zealand have donated over 300,000 bottles of water (ranging from 600mL to 15L) to recovery agencies in Christchurch to support both residents and emergency service workers while the city gets back on its feet. This underlines the community support the industry embarks on each time there is a natural disaster" said the Australasian Bottled Water Institute’s CEO, Mr Geoff Parker.

"The bottled water industry has a long and proud history of supporting communities when they need it most. Bottlers in Australia recently donated over 750,000 bottles of water to communities in Queensland and Victoria after they were hit by cyclones and floods. A little over two years ago Victorian communities devastated by fires had $1 million of product donated by the nation’s largest bottler, Coca Cola Amatil.

"As in the past the Christchurch donations have come from a mix of the very largest down to the very smallest of bottlers, some in Australia with no personal link to our friends across the Tasman. This just shows how the industry drops everything to help people in need.

"While the anti-industry campaigners continue with their smear campaigns pushing for bans of bottled water, Australian and New Zealand bottlers are getting on with the task of ensuring communities in need have access to one of life's necessities - water. These donations are only made possible in an open market economy with free terms of trade and without the ban pushers" Mr Parker said.

In 2009-10 the industry provided 225,000 litres of product at the request of Australian State, Territory and Federal Governments and a further 115,000 litres of bottled water to community groups which included rural schools, sporting teams and charitable organisations. Many bottlers in Australia and New Zealand, most of them family-owned businesses, donate bottled water to support their local emergency service workers to do their vital job of protecting and helping communities.

For more information go to www.ourbottledwater.org.au.

ENDS

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