Coke sets targets for cuts in water, emissions

[Project Grudge]

Source: Reuters

Coca-Cola is the latest American brand working to improve its environmental credentials with a sweeping new program that pledges to improve water efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions throughout its massive global system.

The soft drink maker today said that through a partnership with environmental group WWF, it has committed to eliminating 50 billion liters of water from its bottling plants by 2012 by improving water efficiency by 20 percent over 2004 levels.


Read more: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/10/30/coke-sets-targets-for-cuts-in-water-emissions/

---

I'm so happy that businesses are starting to see the light; however, Coke could do a lot more.

[Xipe Totec]

1. The Atlantians will be pissed

How are they supposed to evolve gills and fins without Coke in the water?

[Poseidan]

2. coke, the psychiatric cure for depression

Snort this white, powdery substance every 30 minutes and your depression will be gone!

[Indenturedebtor]

3. I will do my part by not drinking diabetes causing high-fructose tooth melting

artificially flavored garbage.

Why do so many people have a problem with drinking water, juice, coffee, and tea?

[iamthebandfanman]

7. personally, i enjoy all of them.

given all the toxins i breath, injest, and digest without even trying and sometimes completely without my knowledge..... whats a lil sugar bi-product?

[shanti]

9. longtime soda drinker

but converted to mostly water a couple of years ago. i think it's the carbonation that's the big difference, and people like it. :shrug:

[MonteLukast]

10. Irony: Coke from Mexico uses sugar...

... NOT high fructose corn syrup!

And Coke is more sanitary to drink than water in many locales down there. Just like beer was cleaner than water in the Middle Ages.

[Indenturedebtor]

11. See if they made it like that here I might drink one occassionally

But damn if there aren't about 6 beverages I'd rather have before I had a soda. Bleh.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Coke could stop having paramilitaries kill the union organizers in Colombia, as a suggestion.

Union Says Coca-Cola in Colombia Uses Thugs
By JUAN FORERO
Published: July 26, 2001

An American labor-rights group and the United Steelworkers union have filed a suit in the United States that accuses Coca-Cola and some bottlers here of using a right-wing paramilitary group to intimidate and, in some cases, assassinate labor organizers. Coca-Cola adamantly rejected the accusations on Monday.

Along with one of the three bottlers cited in the suit, the soft-drink giant said the company and its affiliates abided by the laws of Colombia and other countries.

~snip~
The suit, filed on Friday in Federal District Court in Miami, arises in the midst of a fierce killing spree of union workers across Colombia, most of them slain by gunmen who belong to the main paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, union organizers and human rights groups contend.

Sixty-seven union members have been killed this year, mostly from unions that represent government workers like teachers and utilities workers, said the National Union School, a research and educational center in Medellín. Last year, at least 130 were slain, the center said.

The suit, filed by lawyers from the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington and the steelworkers' union, was brought on behalf of the estate of a union leader killed in 1996 and others who have been threatened. The defendants, in addition to Coca-Cola and Panamco, are Panamerican Beverages of Miami, which owns Panamco, and Bebidas y Alimentos, a bottler owned by Richard Kirby of Miami.

The suit asserts that paramilitary forces killed three workers, members of the National Union for Food Industry Workers who worked in a Bebidas y Alimentos plant in Carepa in northern Colombia. The company declined to comment. No one has been arrested in connection with the murders.

More:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E1DD173DF935A15754C0A9679C8B63

http://www.greenleft.org.au.nyud.net:8090/2001/474/474p25.gif

~snip~
Colombia and Turkey: Coca-Cola Abuses
In Colombia, trade union leaders from SINALTRAINAL, the national union of food and beverage workers, have been murdered and tortured by paramilitary death squads brought in by local Coca-Cola bottling plant managers to suppress with violence the workers’ organizing efforts. In Turkey, the local Coca-Cola managers fired 110 Coca-Cola transport workers when they joined a union. When the workers peacefully gathered with their families at the Coca-Cola headquarters in Istanbul, Coca-Cola unleashed about 1,000 of the Turkish riot police, the Çevik Kuvvet , on the crowd. About 90 people, including women and children, were hospitalized after they were brutally beaten.

The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) has filed lawsuits against Coca-Cola on behalf of the Colombian and Turkish victims of Coca-Cola’s violations of human rights. ILRF’s Executive Director, Terry Collingsworth, who is counsel in the cases, stated of the NYU victory, “we will ultimately prevail in the litigation, but these human rights cases can take years. In the meantime, Coca-Cola has an army of public relations staff deceiving the public about Coca-Cola’s complicity in human rights violations. The USAS victory at NYU, and a number of other campuses, shows the public is not buying Coca-Cola’s deceptions. It is no coincidence, as was reported recently in the Wall Street Journal, that Coca-Cola’s market share is in sharp decline. People have a choice of beverages, and Killer Coke is not very refreshing.”

Coca-Cola and Anti-Union Death Squads in Colombia

Violations of human rights are rampant in Colombia due to lawless activities of both the right wing paramilitaries and leftist guerillas. The paramilitaries in Colombia are particularly well known for murdering, abducting and torturing trade union leaders. Specifically, much of the violence against trade unionists in Colombia is directed at leaders of unions at multinational firms, including the Coca-Cola company. One union representing workers at Coca-Cola, Sinaltrainal, has sustained heavy losses of leaders and members who were employed by the company. Having no other options and facing ongoing violence, Sinaltrainal requested ILRF and the United Steelworkers Union to file an ATCA case against Coca-Cola and its Colombian bottlers. The case was filed in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, No. 01-03208-CIV, on July 21, 2001. Plaintiffs are Sinaltrainal, and five individuals who have been murdered, tortured, and/or unlawfully detained. They are seeking to hold Coca-Cola, and two of its Colombian bottlers liable for using paramilitaries to engage in anti-union violence. This case also presents the issue of corporate liability for acts of subsidiaries or agents. Coca-Cola's defense is not that the murder and terrorism of trade unionists did not occur; rather, Coca Cola argues that it cannot be held liable in a US federal court for occurrences in Colombia. Coca-Cola also argues that it does not "own", and therefore does not control, the bottling plants in Colombia. This case seeks to develop a standard under which a multinational company cannot have the best of both worlds by profiting from human rights violations but limiting liability to a local entity that is a mere facilitator for the parent company's operations. The defendants' motion to dismiss is pending, and a decision is expected in early 2002.

http://lrights.igc.org/projects/corporate/coke/

http://www.killercoke.org.nyud.net:8090/images/cokefloat_th.gif http://www.dissidentvoice.org.nyud.net:8090/July2004/CocaCola2.JPG

April 22, 2002

Colombian Coca-Cola Workers Speak Out

by Patrick Keaney

Hundreds of members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters rallied in the streets of Manhattan on Wednesday, April 17, in a show of international support for their fellow workers in Colombia. As the unionists assembled outside of Madison Square Garden, executives and shareholders from the Coca-Cola Corporation were inside for the group's annual meeting. The action by the Teamsters was designed in part to draw attention to the appallingly high number of union workers, including employees in plants owned by Coca-Cola subsidiaries, assassinated each year in Colombia as part of the ongoing political violence in that country.

"Coca-Cola must acknowledge that the killing and abuse of its workers is far more than a marketing problem," said James P. Hoffa, Teamsters General President, at the shareholder meeting. "This company must take responsibility for its employees and negotiate an enforceable rights agreement with its unions." Hoffa was joined at the convention by Luis Javier Correa Suarez, President of Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos (SINALTRAINAL), Colombia's food and beverage union. Correa has been traveling the United States as part of a speaker's tour organized by the Teamsters, to raise awareness about the grim realities that workers face in Colombia.

More:
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia110.htm

[keepCAblue]

5. This is a joke...Coke's PR is B.S. to the people in India who have no water

This article is just from a few short months ago:

"The Coca-Cola company is a gross violator of human rights in India by continuing to operate its plants in areas where the community is unable to meet its basic water needs. Do we need to satisfy Coca-Cola's thirst for water when even the farmers don't have enough water to make a living?" said Amit Srivastava of the India Resource Center, an international campaigning organization. "All of Coca-Cola's claims of being a socially responsible corporation ring hollow when weighed against its track record in India."

Full article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8591

[Judi Lynn]

6. I've heard about this, too. Unbelievable, isn't it?

It looks like the cruelest joke in the world.

What they have done in India is devastating. It's hard to believe the Indian government has allowed them to do it, too. Only goes to show they have REALLY bribed some people royally in that country to get this kind of power there which brings such horrendous harm for others.

Sure glad you brought this up.

I have been overfocused on their murderous debt they owe the workers and the poor of Colombia, who are ENTIRELY not represented in their own government.

http://www.indiaresource.org.nyud.net:8090/campaigns/coke/images/quitindia.jpg

Arrogance and Impunity - Coca-Cola in India

By Amit Srivastava
India Resource Center
August 10, 2006

http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2006/2009.html

http://www.towardfreedom.com.nyud.net:8090/home/images/stories/April08/7-3-mehdiganj20081.jpg
India: Major Protest Demands Coca-Cola Shut Down Plant
Written by Nandlal Master, Lok Samiti, Amit Srivastava
Wednesday, 02 April 2008

Varanasi, India - Over 1,500 villagers marched to the Coca-Cola company's bottling plant in Mehdiganj in Varanasi in India yesterday demanding that the bottling plant shut down immediately.

Breaking a police barrier that attempted to keep the protesters 300 meters from the bottling plant, the villagers held a rally at the plant's gate accusing the company of creating severe water shortages in the area and polluting the water and land.

The march and rally against Coca-Cola in Mehdiganj is the latest in a series of protests against the company in India where communities have accused Coca-Cola bottling plants for exacerbating the water crises through heavy extraction of water from the groundwater resource and polluting the groundwater and soil.

More:
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1267/1/

[keepCAblue]

8. And they've been doing this in India for years...this is not new

I first became aware that CC was depleting entire rural Indian villages of their water a couple years ago. I was surprised when I googled "Coca Cola + India + water" tonight to find the above referenced article bearing a date as recent as April 2008. Obviously, CC is doing little, if anything, to remedy their corporate crimes. I was also disgusted that the article in the OP made zero mention of Coca Cola's track record in India with respect to usage of India's water resources.