'Noah's Ark' seed vault chalks up a million crop varieties

Yahoo – AFP, February 26, 2018

Since opening on February 26, 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has taken
in more than a million different seed varieties (AFP Photo/Larsen, Hakon Mosvold)

Longyearbyen (AFP) - Norway's 'doomsday' seed bank, which seeks to protect the world's crops from natural disasters, on Monday said it had gathered more than a million varieties as it marked its 10-year anniversary.

Dubbed the "Noah's Ark" of food crops, the Global Seed Vault is located deep inside a mountain on Svalbard, a remote Arctic island in a Norwegian archipelago and has the capacity to store up to 4.5 billion seeds.

Launched in 2008, the Svalbard vault was on Monday marking its 10th anniversary by taking shipments of more than 76,000 seed samples, with depositors from all over the world delivering crops such as black-eyed peas, the Bambara groundnut and the Estonian onion potato.

Although housed in Norway, the seeds belong to the donor states and institutions and they can withdraw them at their convenience.

The delivery raises to 1,059,646 the overall number of unique crop varieties deposited in the so-called "doomsday vault" since it opened on February 26, 2008 with the aim of providing a "fail-safe seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time and the challenge of natural or man-made disasters."

"I am extremely happy to announce that more than one million seeds will pass through this door to be secured forever," said Norway's Agriculture Minister Jon Georg Dale.

The vault currently has 967,216 varities as some Syrian grains were withdrawn with the aim of re-introducing local strains after the fighting in Aleppo ended.

There are 1,700 gene banks around the world that safeguard collections of food crops and many of these are exposed to natural disasters and wars, according to the independent Global Crop Diversity Trust.

Located 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the North Pole, the Svalbard archipelago, which is twice the size of Belgium, counts 2,300 inhabitants and is considered the ideal place for the vault due to its remoteness, far from civil strife.

"Noah's Ark" seed vault, located deep inside a mountain on Svalbard, chalks up a million crop varieties https://t.co/d9W5RmE1px pic.twitter.com/FXAbqwbwLj

— AFP news agency (@AFP) February 27, 2018

Taiwan to ban disposable plastic items by 2030

France24 – AFP, 22 February 2018

Consumers will have to pay extra for all straws, plastic shopping bags,
disposable utensils and beverage cups from 2025 

TAIPEI (AFP) Taiwan is planning a blanket ban on single-use plastic items including straws, cups and shopping bags by 2030, officials said Thursday, with restaurants facing new restrictions from next year.

It is the latest push by Taiwan to cut waste and pollution after introducing a recycling programme and charges for plastic bags.

The island's eco-drive has also extended to limiting the use of incense at temples and festivals to protect public health.

Its new plan will force major chain restaurants to stop providing plastic straws for in-store use from 2019, a requirement that will expand to all dining outlets in 2020.

Consumers will have to pay extra for all straws, plastic shopping bags, disposable utensils and beverage cups from 2025, ahead of a full ban on the single-use items five years later, according to the road map from the government's Environmental Protection Administration (EPA).

"We aim to implement a blanket ban by 2030 to significantly reduce plastic waste that pollutes the ocean and also gets into the food chain to affect human health," said Lai Ying-ying, an EPA official supervising the new programme.

According to Lai, a Taiwanese person on average uses 700 plastic bags annually. The EPA aims to reduce the number to 100 by 2025 and to zero by 2030.

The government has already banned free plastic shopping bags in major retail outlets including supermarkets and convenience stores, expanding the move to smaller businesses including bakeries and drinks kiosks from this year.

The island started recycling plastic and pushing to reduce single-use plastic items more than a decade ago.

Last year, nearly 200,000 tonnes of plastic containers were recycled, the EPA said.

Dutch minister confirms ban on drilling, shale gas ‘not an option’

DutchNews, February 16, 2018

Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Netherlands will not give out any permits for the exploration for shale gas in the Netherlands, economic affairs minister Erik Wiebes has confirmed to parliament.

‘Shale gas is not an option in the Netherlands any more,’ Wiebes said. ‘We are not doing it. It is over and done with.’ 

The previous economic affairs minister Henk Kamp introduced a five-year moratorium on drilling for shale gas which expires in 2020. 

Shale gas is ordinary natural gas that has been trapped in dense shale beds deep underground. It is extracted using a controversial process known as fracking, which involves drilling a hole deep into the shale and pumping in water mixed with sand and chemicals. 

A number of local councils, water boards and even brewing groups like Heineken have come out against the production of shale gas in the Netherlands because of the risk of pollution. 

Energy group Cuadrilla, which had been given a licence to test drill for shale gas at two locations in the Netherlands, is currently appealing to the Council of State against Kamp’s decision to suspend its licence after bringing in the five year ban.

Cracking discovery: Japan scientist uses egg white for clean energy

Yahoo – AFP, 15 February 2018

It's a cracking discovery

A Japanese scientist said Thursday his team has cracked open a method to improve the production of carbon-free energy -- by using proteins taken from egg white.

Yusuke Yamada, a professor at Osaka City University, said his team has managed to use protein from egg white as a "tool" for producing hydrogen, a powerful source of clean electricity.

The new method "brings us closer to our ultimate goal of producing hydrogen from water," Yamada told AFP.

"This lays the groundwork for the clean production of hydrogen in the future," added the scientist.

When it reacts with oxygen, hydrogen produces electricity, releasing only water and heat in the process.

But hydrogen is currently mass-produced using natural gas or fossil fuels, which themselves result in harmful emissions.

It can be produced in labs without fossil fuels and scientists have traditionally done this by creating a special interaction of the molecules in liquid, explained Yamada.

But free-moving and randomly located molecules and particles in the fluid can interfere with the process of producing hydrogen and scientists have long searched for a way to immobilise them.

Yamada's team used a protein found in egg to build crystals with lots of tiny holes to trap these particles.

The change brought a sense of traffic control to the molecular interactions and improved the efficiency of clean, hydrogen production, Yamada said.

"If you use hydrogen as an energy source, it only releases water in the environment. It is extremely environmentally friendly," he told AFP.

"We found protein was a useful tool" to generate hydrogen in a lab without using a fossil fuel, the professor said.

The world's leading companies see hydrogen as the ultimate clean energy to power everything from cars to office buildings in the future, and ditch fossil fuels that cause global warming.

Yamada's method was published in the February edition of the scientific journal "Applied Catalysis B".

"Who You Are – 2018” – (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

Kryon.com, January 14, 2018

This live channelling was given in Longmont, Colorado

Lee Carroll

To help the reader, this channelling has been revisited [by Lee and Kryon] to provide even clearer understanding. Sometime information is even added or condensed. Often what happens live has implied energy within it, which carries a kind of communication that the printed page does not. So enjoy this enhanced message given in Longmont.

Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service. Again my partner steps aside and what follows is new information. The message is going to be combined with information I've been giving you for more than two decades, but there is now a completion of the next phase of knowledge.

The year 2018 in Tibetan numerology is a master number. It adds up to eleven, and the meaning of this number is illumination. So it's like an invitation to allow this year to be the one where the light is turned on in so many minds about what is truly happening for the planet. Today, I give you very esoteric but profound information that speaks about you and who you are. It speaks of a new paradigm of Human Being.

The study this weekend has been both scientific and esoteric. Those who have been in this audience have received something that most do not - a combination of energies. It's a combination of science and what you call spirituality, which then blurs this whole study in a way where some have to ask, "What really is the difference between them?" So I'll say it again: If you believe that God or a creative source created the planet, then that creative source logically has to be the master physicist. Everything you're looking at and studying is the creation from an intelligent outside source and, therefore, your science is the study of what this creative source did.

You have to start understanding that there is more than just an overlap between science and spirituality. It is actually the same study. It's a sign of the times that, within your reality, even the most scientific Humans are often saying, "We see some kind of an intelligence in the Universe that has affected all of us. We don't understand how it works and we don't know why, but it has to be there because of the logic of what we are actually observing." This statement refers to the older idea that randomness and chance created everything, yet this is now being seen as impossible. It also gives new urgency to the question, "Who are you, really?"

Eventually, even the most closed minded of those who study science will have to come around to a conclusion that things are not as they thought or were told. The very study of Human evolution will come into question. The prevailing ideas of how you got here, and how long it took, are wrong. It is now, post-2012, that there will start to be very clear indications of another story completely.

Even with that, your educational textbooks continue to give you a mythology of a lineage of Human development. This will have to change, and I'll tell you why, dear ones. It's because if it does not, there will be a rebellion within the young people who are looking around and seeing a different truth. This will eventually force a rewrite of a history that is currently biased in old thinking and old ideas. But that's not what I want to talk about.

The Creation Story Revisited

I want to talk about the rest of the story. What follows is completely and totally esoteric, with only occasional punctuations of science. But it is logical. I wish to tell a story I've told before, but now will be enhanced. It's a story of creation. It's one of the greatest love stories that you could have on the planet, and it speaks of those in another part of the galaxy who have a spiritual evolution millions of years greater than yours - millions. What do you think that might look like? If consciousness is evolving within Humans, and since consciousness has been shown to effect physical things, is it too much of a stretch to imagine that your consciousness might be able to eventually control some physics?

The ones who "seeded you" can control many parts of physics with their consciousness. It's not technology, but a spiritually evolved, loving consciousness. They came to this planet 200,000 years ago and changed you. We call them the seed planters, and you call them the Pleiadians. To many, they even are called angels, since when they are seen, it is "out of this world" to you. Is this ridiculous to you? Let me ask you: Did you ever have masters on this planet who seemed to control physics and reality? The answer is "most of them". Think about it. What if mastery of your spiritual-self creates the ability to alter systems you haven't discovered yet? You have seen it and reported it in your ancient scriptures!

What these seed planters did is to change your consciousness through biological advancement. They literally changed the magnetic patterns that exist inside the very DNA of the modern Human. From a spiritual aspect, you received the ability to discern God inside, and to sense or discern the potential of a benevolent creator. You received the ability and free choice to know the difference between dark and light, right and wrong, and feel the love of God. This was on purpose, as designed by the creative source, and was not an accident or an experiment. You are here on purpose, dear ones. This is a test of energy for your civilization.

But it doesn't stop there because there is a timeframe involved. It's a timeframe that we have not discussed fully before, but it still relates to the perception of the stars that you observe. The stars move slowly in a very consistent pattern that corresponds with your planet's slow wobble as it goes around your Sun. The wobble of your planet, as you have measured it, is 26,000 years long from start to finish. The timeframe [duration] of this test of humanity's free choice of light and dark consciousness is two cycles of the 26,000-year wobble. Listen. Many have thought it was one cycle. However, it was two.

Humans Have Been Here a Very Long Time

For those who are already lost in this discussion, we review the discoveries and ideas from the ancients, which say there is a great deal of history before your history. You have your own ideas of how long you have been here, and it doesn't go much past 9,000 years. However, there is now evidence that there were some civilizations before yours who even knew about astronomy! We even gave you a channelling while in Turkey about this very subject. The prevailing ideas of this theory had you with five civilizations on the earth - all within one cycle of the 26,000-year wobble. Many believe that moving into 2012 has you beginning the sixth cycle [Dec 21, 2012, was the centering of the wobble]. In addition, the Mayan calendar "long count" is almost exactly one-fifth of the 26,000-year cycle - indicating it was the calendar for YOUR civilization.

However, now we tell you that the real timeframe of this entire Human test of energy (light and dark) was two cycles - 52,000 years, not one cycle of 26,000 years. That means that Humans like you, thinking like you, and evolved exactly like you, have been here for 52,000 years. So, do you really think Humans have had history on your planet for more than 50,000 years? What are you taught in school? Stand by for a revelation.

What a coincidence! [Kryon being funny] The oldest confirmed civilization that you have measured through DNA and archeological evidence, is indeed approximately 52,000 years old! It's in Australia. Here is the proof that Humans like you have actually been around that long. Why 52,000 years? Because there were approximately 10 civilizations of humanity, not five. We say approximately because they melded into each other, but were still distinctly separate. So, if this is true, what do you now think about the teaching you got in school about the length of the development of civilization. Will you go with the books or with the new evidence?

These first five cycles didn't have the numbers (amount of Humans) that would give you that which is measurable now as a "civilization", but, dear ones, these groups still destroyed themselves or were in a place that destroyed them. In smaller numbers, in tribes, this was very possible. You can still war until there are only a few left, no matter how few you are. You can still have dark Human nature, over and over. Take a look at your own known history. This is exactly what you did as well.

The weather cycles also contributed to this, for when you start to understand that there are actually cycles involved in your current weather shift, you will also see that they relate to the wobble. Isn't it interesting that you have one right now and it's the beginning of a new wobble cycle?

What is your Akash really filled with? How many years have you worked this puzzle, old soul? Well, I've just told you! Some of you go back 52,000 years. When you then start looking at the timeline of Lemuria that we have given you, it also starts to make sense. [The history of Lemuria was given during the conference.] Lemuria goes back 50,000 years. We gave this information to you more than a decade ago.

Archeologists are not going to find much from the past five civilizations [26,000 years]. In fact, it's even difficult to find things that are over 14,000 years [before the Indus Valley group]. Nature does a good job of covering almost everything that Humans do.

Within those first smaller civilizations, there were a few structures, but they weren't big. Some of those civilizations had no structures at all, and just like the history of the indigenous of Australia, they moved with the seasons and the food. They never stayed in one place for long, and farming wasn't yet evolved. Even with the few, however,  there were enough of them to disagree with who should share resources. Sound familiar? There were enough of them to be afraid of each other, since they met others they didn't know as they travelled. They couldn't "see" each other well, since they didn't share much past their own groups. There were enough of them to go to war with one another. There were enough of them to wound each other and let infections, disease and plague wipe out the few who were left.

The Profundity of the DNA Shift

Now, the next revelation is this something we have discussed before, but the Twist Master needs to hear it again. He is here in the audience and his Lemurian name is Yaw'ee. [This is referring to Dr. Todd Ovokaitys, DNA researcher, who was in the live audience.].

Yes, your Human DNA was changed. We have channelled this since my partner accepted me [Kryon] 28 years ago. We told you that when the Pleiadians' seeds were planted on this beautiful earth [the ones who gave you the knowledge of light and dark], it was done by altering your DNA. It directly gave you a portion of the DNA that the Pleiadians had in them. The biggest thing they gave you was a pair of chromosomes which have been hiding for a long time.

I'll tell you about them in a moment. But this pair of chromosomes allows for a specific memory of wisdom - intuition, and an evolved ability to pull yourself out of what you call current "Human nature". It gives you the ability to completely think way beyond war. Dear ones, this has always been a test of free choice, without interference from any outside source, to see if you could discover it. You have.

Now you sit in a time, right at the end of the 10th civilization and the beginning of the 11th, and you have figured it out. The energy is changing on the earth for you! There is more ability for you to advance in light right now than there ever has been before. There is now an ability for you to (ready?) become multidimensional.

The Next Step - Becoming Multidimensionally Aware

For the past few years, I have been channelling about this. In fact, it's the subject of the last publication of Kryon [Kryon Book 14]. What is it like for a Human Being to step out of linearity and become multidimensional? What would it look like? It affects your consciousness. The consciousness we are talking about is the evolving thinking and awareness of a multidimensional Human. It is a consciousness that is higher; one of empathy, compassion, caring, gentleness, benevolence and greater wisdom. It's a consciousness where you "remember" what makes things work that you've never known in 10 civilizations! From the stars, it's an understanding that war does not work! Appreciation of the beauty of life and humanism is the core. It creates a driving, prime directive within every new child born on the planet - Honor life! And, dear ones, it comes from something that happened in your DNA.

Today you studied something remarkable, scientific, beautiful and controversial. You studied in depth what happened when a chromosome pair [labeled number two] suddenly changed 200,000 years ago. Somehow you lost chromosome pair 24, and also somehow there was a morphing of another pair, and pair number two received some startling changes. You ended up with 23 pairs, unlike any mammal supposedly below you in the evolutionary chain. Suddenly there was huge "missing link" in what you are currently told about Human evolution, and this has remained a puzzle since then.

What actually happened is that your DNA changed radically. It changed to reflect the parent seed planter, the Pleiadian.

Those listening to this who are very spiritual and have strict doctrines [created by Humans] will roll their eyes and say, “I knew it. That New-Age channel says that we came from ETs!”

Dear ones, that's not what I'm telling you. Instead, I'm telling you that those so-called ETs, those Pleiadians, knew God inside. They knew about the creative source far better than you do, and they know everything that has to do with the other side of the veil because they were living it. This is what the evolution of consciousness is all about. It brings you into an alignment with what is hidden on the other side of the veil. It reveals the connection, finally, to the outside - the creative source. God inside has been the premise of the Kryon message for 28 years. Is it really too much of a stretch for you to think that others in the galaxy knew the "one God" that you know on Earth?

DNA - The Missing 24th Pair of Chromosomes

Back to your DNA - you observe that you have 23 pairs of chromosomes, and you are beginning to study amazing, big, biological changes from the past - the fusion of some of your DNA and the enhancements that occurred during that. Well, you missed something. It's obscure, but there is something else.

Science revealed a potential some years ago. Experiments showed that your DNA might actually be a bit multidimensional. What they report is that the presence of DNA in a quantum field changes the spin of electrons in that field. When DNA is then removed, the changes that occurred due to the DNA remain. Follow the logic. If the presence of DNA changed atomic structure in a multidimensional field, it therefore could have a multidimensional component.(*)

Let me introduce you to something that we have stated one time before: You still have 24 pairs of chromosomes. They were moved around, combined, and the new 24th pair is multidimensional. This invisible pair (not in 3D) has been unused for 10 civilizations, and now it's starting to awaken due to the shift. It is also being affected by the radiation that is new in your magnetic field, being slowly created by a new area in space that your solar system is beginning to go through.(**)

Do you understand this premise? You still have 24 pairs, but one of them is not seeable, just like gravity is not visible or the magnetic field itself. This very special 24th pair is fully multidimensional and that is why your DNA can actually affect the spin of an electron in a quantum field.

So, what does it mean to you? It means that you have the ability to pull yourself out of linear thinking, out of that which always led you right into war and dysfunction! Are you getting this? You never were wise enough to understand really who you were. This is now changing.

Those who realize this and begin awakening to this new idea are the old souls who have been here for thousands of lifetimes and who experienced the horror of war and have been waiting for this very thing. These are the ones who understand the confluence of synchronicity is not chance. It's planned. They also are learning that coherence of a more positive Human consciousness is starting to occur worldwide. It's the coherence of a connection to the other side of the veil. It's a connection that you didn't expect and that will eventually affect everything that is part of your reality from your politics to your corporations. It's a coherence that will cause trouble, since there are many who wish to keep the old energy as it was.

Dear ones, as odd and eye-rolling as all this sounds, you will see it actually happening. As this 24thpair starts to light up, someday you might even meet those who put it there. Again, I ask: Is it simply too bizarre for your mind to imagine that others are here with you in your vast galaxy, who are far older and more advanced, and who found the beauty of God? Think about it.

This is the love story. The earth is not a simulation as some high thinkers have defined it, but rather it may look like it since what happened on it is completely artificial. In other words, life was created and developed much too fast on Earth to be by chance. That was by design. The Human Being who was changed here 200,000 years ago was by design. There was no randomness in the development of this beautiful, designed system you live in called Gaia. You are in a profound test of dark and light, as we have been saying for a long time.

It's the end of the channel, but it's the beginning of something remarkable. As this information I have given begins to manifest itself, humanity will start to realize that they are in total control of what happens next. There will be new hope for this planet that's based on some things that science is just barely starting to see - not admitting yet, but starting to see.

You are in a time when new information can fly around the planet in seconds. These new and unexpected things that are seen through new discoveries will never be able to be kept secret in this new paradigm. Listen, no matter what the paradigms or protocols of the old were, you can't have something be seen and presented to tens of millions that "smiles and says hello" and then have a small group of leaders or educators tell you it didn't happen. Do you understand this metaphor? You can't hide or deny light any more. Too many are watching.

This will be the frustration that is coming in so many areas. There will be great conflict between what you see and what you have been told. Old souls, all of you listening here in this room, this is the free choice of the age. Get ready for it. Indeed, the teacher Gregg is correct [scientist Gregg Braden, who presented in the seminar] - this will eventually define who you are and your place in the Universe, and especially your galaxy

I know who you are, dear angelic being with God inside. I know who you are. Time for you to see it, too.

And so it is.

KRYON

* www.kryon.com/81-5

** www.kryon.com/79-1

Related Articles:

"The Big Picture - You Are Not Alone" - (Voice message from Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

"The Timing of Creation"– Aug  12, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Text version)

“Time to Say Goodbye” - Sarah Brightman & Andrea Bocelli (+Kryon Channellings)

"Spiritual Logic" - Oct 15, 2011 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) 
(Subjects: Benevolent Design, Channelling, Holy scriptures, Higher self, (Old) Souls, Universes, Big Bang, Galaxy/Solar system build for life, Astronomy, Life on Earth tried to start 5 times/ 5th time life started, Large Animals/No Humans,  Asteroid belt, 7 Sisters / 100.000 year ago Pleiadian Brothers and Sisters seeded Humans on earth, DNA, Humans Ascensiont with Pleiadian DNA, Lemuria (Hawaii),21-12-2012, 26.000 years cycle, 1987 - Harmonic convergence (11:11), Shift of Human Consciousness, Gaia, The Humanization of God, 1991 Russia falls, 1994 started 36 years galactic window (Presession), Mid point on 21-12-2012, Lemuria (Hawaii) center of the Earth time,  Love (Mother & Child),  Religion, Higher self, Global Unity,..... etc.)

Tiny Michigan town in water fight with Nestle

Yahoo – AFP, Luc OLINGA, 4 February 2018

Maryann Borden looks over her yard at Twin Creek, which she says is not the
same since Nestle began pumping water in the region

Global food conglomerate Nestle is in a battle with critics in tiny Osceola Township, Michigan where residents complain the Swiss company's water extraction techniques are ruining the environment.

Maryann Borden, a retired teacher who has lived in the western Michigan town since 1953, has photos documenting changes in the Twin Creek river since Nestle began pumping water in the region in the early 2000s for its "Ice Mountain" brand of bottled water.

"It's not the same creek," Borden, 73, told AFP. "It's narrower and deeper and therefore warmer," compared with the "biting cold" water of her youth.

"The trout can't survive in it because the water is warmer," she added.

Located about four hours north of Detroit and with a population of just 900, Osceola Township is a sleepy rural community whose biggest employer is SpringHill Camp, a Christian-oriented program for kids.

The town opposes granting Nestle a permit to build a pumping booster station along a water pipeline that feeds a tanker load dock in Evart, another small town nearby.

The booster station would help the company pump more water from a controversial Osceola County wellhead if the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approves the project. Nestle wants to pump 400 gallons of water a minute, up from the 250 a minute currently.

Town officials voted in January to appeal a county court's ruling in Nestle's favor, portending a judicial saga.

"If you look at the culverts, they provide an historic landmark," said Tim Ladd, manager of Osceola Township.

"You don't have to be a geologist or a hydrologist to see those water levels," he added. "The water lake tables are lower today than what they were two years ago."

Nestle rejects this argument and also has some backing among supporters who praise the company for keeping water rates low.

Area residents say water extraction techniques of the Nestle Waters bottling

facility in Stanwood, Michigan, have damaged the environment

"There's been no measurable changes to the streams, the aquatic life there," said Arlene Anderson-Vincent, natural resource manager at Nestle Waters North America, who notes that dams in the area "can affect those streams."

Nestle points to company-sponsored research that backs up its stance, but there has been no independent scientific review of the matter.

$200 a year

Much of the anger in Osceola Township, that voted heavily for President Donald Trump in the 2016 US election, is due to a sense the town is being exploited by a powerful multinational blinded by profit.

Nestle pays just $200 a year to the state of Michigan to pump more than 130 million gallons (590 million liters) of water.

Other US states have struck similar arrangements with big companies, authorizing them to pump as much water as they wish for a pittance as long as they build the infrastructure themselves. This includes the beverage giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which sell water under the Dasani and Aquafina brands.

"Nestle has a reputation worldwide of going to poor rural communities, offering all kinds of economic benefits to the community that never really materialize, and taking as much water as they can get and when the stream runs dry they leave," said Peggy Case, president of the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation.

Nestle said it spends $18 million a year in Michigan, including $2.4 million in taxes in 2016. The company employs 280 people at its factory in Mecosta County, about 40 minutes away from Osceola Township where about 50 Nestle workers live.

Demand for bottled water, such as these stacks at 

Nestle's facility in Stanwood, Michigan, is rising

Nestle is turning to Twin Creek River as demand for bottled water rises. Wholesale bottled water sales hit a total of $16.4 billion in 2016, surpassing soda sales of $12.5 billion for the first time, according to the Beverage Marketing consultancy.

Nestle's water brands in the US, which includes Poland Springs and Pure Life in addition to Ice Mountain, garnered 55.3 percent of the company's total worldwide water sales in 2016.

Affordable water?

Zackary Szakacs, city manager of Evart, credited Nestle with keeping water rates low in the region. The average income in Osceola Township is just $20,000 per year, around the poverty level for a family of three.

"Thank God we have two of those wells in the city of Evart because I would have to lay people off," Szakacs said.

"They help maintain and keep our water rates low so our residents that are poor that live in this community can afford to pay their monthly water bill."

After finding the chemical perchlorate at some wells in 2015, Nestle financed the cleanup.

Evart is only a couple of hours drive from Flint, where a major water contamination scandal has drawn national attention.

Access to affordable drinking water is becoming more problematic, and as many as 36 percent of US households may be unable to afford water within five years, according to a 2017 study by Michigan State University scholar Elizabeth Mack.

Global food conglomerate Nestle is in a battle with critics in tiny Osceola Township, Michigan where residents complain the Swiss company's water extraction techniques are ruining the environment. pic.twitter.com/bHIgf7P5D5

— AFP news agency (@AFP) February 4, 2018

Related Articles:

Time now to act on looming water crisis, UN warns

Wind-powered desalination project targets world market

Alfredo Zolezzi: how a plasma water purifying system is saving lives

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…  4 - Energy (again)

The natural resources of the planet are finite and will not support the continuation of what you've been doing. We've been saying this for a decade. Watch for increased science and increased funding for alternate ways of creating electricity (finally). Watch for the very companies who have the most to lose being the ones who fund it. It is the beginning of a full realization that a change of thinking is at hand. You can take things from Gaia that are energy, instead of physical resources. We speak yet again about geothermal, about tidal, about wind. Again, we plead with you not to over-engineer this. For one of the things that Human Beings do in a technological age is to over-engineer simple things. Look at nuclear - the most over-engineered and expensive steam engine in existence!

Your current ideas of capturing energy from tidal and wave motion don't have to be technical marvels. Think paddle wheel on a pier with waves, which will create energy in both directions [waves coming and going] tied to a generator that can power dozens of neighborhoods, not full cities. Think simple and decentralize the idea of utilities. The same goes for wind and geothermal. Think of utilities for groups of homes in a cluster. You won't have a grid failure if there is no grid. This is the way of the future, and you'll be more inclined to have it sooner than later if you do this, and it won't cost as much.

Water

We've told you that one of the greatest natural resources of the planet, which is going to shift and change and be mysterious to you, is fresh water. It's going to be the next gold, dear ones. So, we have also given you some hints and examples and again we plead: Even before the potentials of running out of it, learn how to desalinate water in real time without heat. It's there, it's doable, and some already have it in the lab. This will create inexpensive fresh water for the planet. 

There is a change of attitude that is starting to occur. Slowly you're starting to see it and the only thing getting in the way of it are those companies with the big money who currently have the old system. That's starting to change as well. For the big money always wants to invest in what it knows is coming next, but it wants to create what is coming next within the framework of what it has "on the shelf." What is on the shelf is oil, coal, dams, and non-renewable resource usage. It hasn't changed much in the last 100 years, has it? Now you will see a change of free choice. You're going to see decisions made in the boardrooms that would have curled the toes of those two generations ago. Now "the worst thing they could do" might become "the best thing they could do." That, dear ones, is a change of free choice concept. When the thinkers of tomorrow see options that were never options before, that is a shift. That was number four. ….”

"2013 - What Now ?" – Jan 6, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Text version)

“… New ideas are things you never thought of. These ideas will be given to you so you will have answers to the most profound questions that your societies have had since you were born. Inventions will bring clean water to every Human on the planet, cheaply and everywhere. Inventions will give you power, cheaply and everywhere. These ideas will wipe out all of the reasons you now have for pollution, and when you look back on it, you'll go, "This solution was always there. Why didn't we think of that? Why didn't we do this sooner?" Because it wasn't time and you were not ready. You hadn't planted the seeds and you were still battling the old energy, deciding whether you were going to terminate yourselves before 2012. Now you didn't…. and now you didn't.

It's funny, what you ponder about, and what your sociologists consider the "great current problems of mankind", for your new ideas will simply eliminate the very concepts of the questions just as they did in the past. Do you remember? Two hundred years ago, the predictions of sociologists said that you would run out of food, since there wasn't enough land to sustain a greater population. Then you discovered crop rotation and fertilizer. Suddenly, each plot of land could produce many times what it could before. Do you remember the predictions that you would run out of wood to heat your homes? Probably not. That was before electricity. It goes on and on.

So today's puzzles are just as quaint, as you will see. (1)How do you strengthen the power grids of your great nations so that they are not vulnerable to failure or don't require massive infrastructure improvement expenditures? Because cold is coming, and you are going to need more power. (2) What can you do about pollution? (3) What about world overpopulation? Some experts will tell you that a pandemic will be the answer; nature [Gaia] will kill off about one-third of the earth's population. The best minds of the century ponder these puzzles and tell you that you are headed for real problems. You have heard these things all your life.

Let me ask you this. (1) What if you could eliminate the power grid altogether? You can and will. (2) What if pollution-creating sources simply go away, due to new ideas and invention, and the environment starts to self-correct? (3) Overpopulation? You assume that humanity will continue to have children at an exponential rate since they are stupid and can't help themselves. This, dear ones, is a consciousness and education issue, and that is going to change. Imagine a zero growth attribute of many countries - something that will be common. Did you notice that some of your children today are actually starting to ponder if they should have any children at all? What a concept! ….”