http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/150028/1/

Coke Faces New Charges in India, Including 'Greenwashing'
Aaron Glantz OneWorld US

LOS ANGELES, Jun 6 (OneWorld) - The Coca-Cola company has been charged
with illegally seizing lands communally owned by small farmers and
indiscriminately dumping sludge and other industrial hazardous waste
onto the surrounding community. This comes as the multinational
beverage giant announced a new effort Tuesday to protect rivers on
four continents.

Sludge discovered at the Coca-Cola bottling plant by the India
Resource Center fact-finding mission.
Sludge discovered at the Coca-Cola bottling plant by the India
Resource Center fact-finding mission. © India Resource Center
The San Francisco-based India Resource Center, an environmental health
non-profit, further charged Coca-Cola with releasing untreated
wastewater into surrounding agricultural fields and a canal that feeds
into the Ganges River in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The charges are based on the results of a fact-finding mission led by
the group to a Coca-Cola bottling plant in the region.

"Access to potable water is a fundamental human right," said Amit
Srivastava of the India Resource Center.

"The Coca-Cola company must acknowledge that it is part of the problem
of water unsustainability in India and elsewhere," he added.

This is not the first time environmental groups have criticized Coke's
operations in India.

In 2003, in response to a growing campaign against Coca-Cola, the
Central Pollution Control Board of India surveyed eight Coca-Cola
bottling plants in the country and tested the sludge at all these
facilities. The Board found all the sludge at all the Coca-Cola
bottling plants it surveyed contained high levels of toxic heavy
metals like lead, cadmium, and chromium. At the time, it ordered the
Coca-Cola company to treat its sludge as industrial hazardous waste.

Those toxic problems, coupled with allegations Coke has been complicit
in the murders of union organizers at bottling plants in the South
American nation of Colombia, have been increasingly troublesome to the
Atlanta-based company.

In the last six months, 25 universities from the United States,
Canada, and the United Kingdom, including the University of Michigan,
the University of Guelph in Canada, and the University of Manchester
in England, have all taken actions to remove Coca-Cola from their
campuses.

Anti-Coca-Cola protester at the company's annual general meeting, 2004.
Anti-Coca-Cola protester at the company's annual general meeting,
2004. © Aaron Couch / India Resource Center

On May 29, the president of Smith College in Massachusetts, Carol T.
Christ, barred Coke from participating in the school's upcoming soft
drink bidding process. Coca-Cola's seven-year contract with Smith
College expires on August 31.

"In light of Coca-Cola's business practices in Colombia and India,
Smith will preclude Coca-Cola from the list of approved bidders when
we enter the contract renewal process later this summer," Christ wrote
in a letter.

Coke vehemently denies the charges.

"The allegations that led to this decision are based on Internet rumor
and myth, and have been proven false time and again," Coke
spokesperson Diana Garza Ciarlante told New Dehli-based Indo-Asian
News Service.

"While our business relationship with Smith College is important, the
integrity and reputation of our company is more important," she said.

On Tuesday, the soft drink giant announced its own environmental plan,
pledging to spend $20 million to conserve seven of the world's most
critical river basins.

Right now, it takes 2.5 liters of water to make and bottle 1 liter of
Coke, and 250 liters to grow the sugar cane in the mix.

"We are focusing on water because this is where Coca-Cola can have a
real and positive impact," Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO E. Neville
Isdell told a gathering of environmental advocates.

"We are focusing on water because this is where Coca-Cola can have a
real and positive impact"
- Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO E. Neville Isdell
The pledge was announced at the annual meeting of the World Wildlife
Fund (WWF) in Beijing. Over the life of a multiyear partnership with
WWF, the company pledged to focus on "measurably conserving" China's
Yangtze, Southeast Asia's Mekong, the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo of the
southwest United States and Mexico, the rivers and streams of the
southeastern United States, the water basins of the Mesoamerican
Caribbean Reef, the East Africa basin of Lake Malawi, and Europe's
Danube River.

"We call this 'greenwashing,'" said Srivastava of the India Resource
Center. "An attempt by the Coca-Cola company to manufacture a green
image of itself that it clearly is not, as their practice in India shows."

Coke's announcement did not mention any measures to conserve water
basins in India, a decision that did not surprise Srivastava.

"The Coca-Cola company and WWF did not dare to include India in this
initiative (because) the public in India is increasingly becoming
aware of the Coca-Cola company's disastrous relationship with water,
and would have to see it for what it's worth -- a drop in the bucket,"
he told OneWorld.

The deal also rubs U.S. critics of Coke the wrong way.

"In itself it's a good thing, but we see it as largely a tactic to
divert attention from other areas," Patti Lynn of the watchdog group
Corporate Accountability told OneWorld.

"Coke is just trying to get some public relations points. They're
using this as a diversionary tactic," she added.

Lynn and other U.S.-based consumer advocates are angry because of the
foray that Coca-Cola has made into the bottled water market.

From the 1970s to 2000, Corporate Accountability says, the annual
volume of bottled water purchased and sold in the United States has
increased by over 7,000 percent. Yet the bottled water industry
operates with little or no regulation.

"Tap water is better regulated, and often safer," said Lynn, adding
that bottled water costs 3,000 percent more.

Lynn pointed to a 1999 study by the National Resources Defense Council
on bottled water sold in the United States, which found traces of
arsenic, chloroform, and other impurities; chemicals that would be
illegal if found in tap water.

Coca-Cola spent $1.7 billion on advertising last year. In North
America, Coca-Cola distributes three bottled water brands: Dasani,
Dannon, and Evian.

According to the Washington, DC-based Earth Policy Institute,
consumers spend about $100 billion on bottled water each year. By
comparison, experts estimate that just $15 billion per year, above and
beyond what is already spent, could bring reliable and lasting access
to safe drinking water to half a billion people worldwide -- fully
half of those who lack it.

"The way that Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle have marketed bottled water has
had the effect of undermining people's confidence in tap water and
contributed to a broad societal shift," Lynn said. "Instead of buying
bottled water, we need to be investing in our shared, public water
systems."

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Related links
India Resource Center's Findings Against Coke
Bottled Water: Pouring Resources Down the Drain (Earth Policy Institute)
Countries Told to Mind Their Businesses (Policy Innovations)
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Comment List
"how to handle a product you don't like"
Author: katnip kid
Time: 06/08/2007 05:14

Comment: Here's a good way to fight any brand or product you don't
like. Don't purchase it, ever. This may seem obvious, but is worth
pointing out. It is something folks sometimes forget. Follow up your
boycott by nicely telling others-schools, friends, family- and
informing them of the offending brands actions and why you are
boycotting the item. You may get them to boycott the brand as well.

And just why is there toxic waste in Coca-Colas garbage?? Yuck! Try
quenching your thirst on cold water or homemade juices, mint tea
(cold, as iced tea), lemonade or fruitade, iced tea, either regular or
herbal tea, and so on.

Mint is wonderful as it is very easy to grow lots of it. It spreads
into a big patch fast. This is wonderful, because when you find out
how tasty cold mint tea is, you will want to have lots of it.
"Toxic sludge"
Author: graham day-myron
Time: 06/08/2007 02:21

Comment: One wonders as to what part in the chain of the manufacture
of soft drinks would be generating toxic sludge in the form of heavy
metals?

Is this toxic waste extracted via filtering from the water?

It seems surprising that a bottler of sugary drinks would have any
waste other than that from cleaning equipment. Is it not the case that
most of the flavorings are sourced from the parent company, if so then
the issue of heavy metal sludge is indeed mystifying, where does it
come from?

If indeed it is extracted and filtered out of the water, then that
speaks volumes as to the quality of the water that people are forced
to use.

Perhaps Coca Cola should direct its alleged "green" outreach towards
local improvements instead of the bogus throwing of 20 million bucks
into the corporate environmental groups pockets. Much like their
drinks; all image and no substance.

http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/150028/1/