AB InBev’s Mexican Footprint: Exploiting Water, Dodging Accountability

Grupo Modelo – owned by global giant AB InBev – is draining Hidalgo dry. While the company boasts of its “sustainability” efforts, local communities are left with polluted rivers, groundwater depletion, and broken promises. Modelo’s massive brewery in Apan has become a symbol of how Big Alcohol exploits local resources, damages ecosystems, and leaves the public to deal with the consequences.

Despite public outcry and demands for transparency, the company dodges responsibility for the damage. Residents report environmental degradation, water shortages, and the loss of biodiversity – while Modelo continues to extract and profit. The brewery uses enormous volumes of water daily, in a region already facing water stress.

Grupo Modelo hides behind vague sustainability language and superficial greenwashing campaigns, but there’s nothing sustainable about extracting public water for private profit. This isn’t just a local problem. It’s part of a global pattern. From Mexico to Mozambique, Big Alcohol drains water, pollutes land, and then slaps a green label on the damage. Companies like AB InBev sell the idea of being “environmentally responsible” while quietly exploiting communities, especially in countries where regulation is weak or enforcement is lacking.

Sabotage is Big Alcohol’s deliberate actions to damage and obstruct people’s access to public goods. This strategy comprises calculated actions to break and undermine society’s rules, laws, and regulations. This strategy also includes willful activity that jeopardizes people’s access to essential resources such as water and basic food. And it includes Big Alcohol’s deliberate activities to damage or disrupt the proper functioning of society’s institutions, preventing them from addressing alcohol-related harm in the public interest. Examples of this strategy include corruption, bribery, tax evasion and avoidance, price-fixing cartels, violations of alcohol marketing rules, and other unethical practices, such as depleting scarce drinking water.

Source:
https://sintesis.com.mx/hidalgo/2025/04/03/grupo-modelo-deuda-ambiental/

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