[Onthebarricades] Coca Cola Thrown out of 25 universities in the laast 6 months for enviro crimes, 20070607

[Andy]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Scott Munson 
To: undisclosed-recipients: 
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 7:42 PM
Subject: [EF!] Coca Cola Thrown out of 25 universities in the laast 6 months for enviro crimes, 20070607


June 7, 2007 by OneWorld.net
Coke Faces New Charges in India, Including ‘Greenwashing’
by Aaron Glantz
LOS ANGELES - 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.

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.

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.

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.”

Copyright © 2007 OneWorld.net.

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Native Forest Council
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541.461.2156 fax

web page: http://www.forestcouncil.org

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