Nestlé Pure Life was orginally created as Aberfoyle Springs 1993, being produced by the Aberfoyle Springs company. After purchasing the Aberfoyle Springs brand and facilities in 2000, Nestlé adopted the Nestlé Pure Life brand in 2002 and changed the name first to Nestlé Pure Life Aberfoyle, and then to Nestlé Pure Life Natural Spring Water. Nestlé also began to bottle Montclair branded water at the facilities. As of mid 2020, the water extracted by Nestlé Canada was from a source in Aberfoyle, Ontario, a well in Erin, Ontario and another in Hope, British Columbia. The company also owned well in Elora, Ontario which had yet to be tapped. On 3 July 2020, Nestlé Canada announced that it had agreed to sell its water bottling business to Ice River Springs, of Shelbourne, Ontario. The latter would acquire the source and bottling operations in Aberfoyle, Ontario and in Hope, British Columbia, and a well in Erin, Ontario. The announcement came after the Government of Ontario announced plans that would allow municipalities greater power to veto new bottling plants and to set new restrictions on removing groundwater. Nestlé, however, stated that its plans to sell the water bottling business was already in the planning stages in 2019. Ice River was expected to take over the Pure Life brand and the ReadyRefresh delivery service. The deal was awaiting regulator approval, which was expected to happen by the third quarter of 2020.
Nestlé has been criticized that the water will be bottled in poor regions like south America, which could drain natural water sources and affect people who can't afford the expensive bottled water. The movie Bottled Life documented 2012 the situation and won several film awards. In Canada, much of the water extracted by the company for its Pure Life brand has been at a source in the village of Aberfoyle, Ontario in Puslinch, Ontario, located in Wellington County, Ontario and under the jurisdiction of the City of Guelph, Ontario. For some years, a local advocacy group, Wellington Water Watchers has expressed concern about the amount of water being extracted by the company. Formed in 2007, the group's mandate is "the protection, restoration and conservation of drinking water in Guelph and Wellington County". After the planned sale of the Nestlé Canada's water bottling business to Ice River Springs was announced in early July 2020, Wellington Water Watchers said that this was "a victory for the people of Ontario... a response by Nestle to public pressure". In a later statement, however, a spokesperson said that Ontario should be phasing out the bottled water industry, a "low priority and frivolous use of the water taking". Nearly a year earlier, the Wellington group had demanded that the provincial government obtain an environmental assessment before renewing the company's licence to remove any groundwater. At the time, Nestlé’s permit to extract up to 3.6 million litres of water per day was close to coming up for renewal. The most recent study by the City of Guelph about the Aberfoyle source that was likely to be taken over by Ice River Springs included this comment: Nestlé’s water-taking "has not caused a decline or drop in water levels year after year" and that "water-taking at the current rate is sustainable at this point in time".
