What's wrong with Coca Cola.....2.7 litres fresh water to make 1 litre of coke

[zippitippitoes]

Coca Cola are sponsoring the World water Forum despite their own profligate use of water.

I f you drink coke you might find this article interesting (and if you don't)

\link{http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0307-30.htm\Here}

[zippitippitoes]

time for coca cola then

[alliebaba]

blimey.. and it rots your guts

[zippitippitoes]

doesn't sound fun for everyone does it?

[DominiConnor]

I can think of many reasons to slag off Coke, but
their water consumption ?
I'm actually suprised it's that small. If it were 27 litres, that wold be bad.
Cokes consumption of water is a pitifully small number compared to stupidly large wastes of water, like say golf courses.
Are you allowed to say bad things about sport ?

[tarantula]

Is golf a sport than DC??? I thought it was just the ruination of a good walk to say nothing of the destruction of the natural landscape.

[edodgy]

Dc i've just read this article as coca cola use 283 billion litres of water am I reading it wrong?

[stitch]

waste of 2.4 litres of water

[zippitippitoes]

is the production of coke in India more important than fresh drinking water, dc?

283 billion litres is a huge amount of a resource for one company to use and ruin

[DominiConnor]

I think people ar confusing scale and efficiency.
Fact is people want this sort of muck, and Coke is the 2nd most successful supplier.
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that if there were 100 companies each using 1% as much to produce fizzy drinks ?


Is this just blind hatred of a large american organisation ? Why are you happy to slag Coke, but not the Goling industry which is a mjor polluter as well as water consumer, or even football which consumes vastly more water than Coke.

is the production of coke in India more important than fresh drinking water, dc?
I'm not sure quite why you see it as an alternative.
Have you studied the water system in India at all ?
The issues there are not production of water, but it's distribution which is hopelessly corrupt and bureaucratically inefficient.
Also if you are going to cite India, presumably you are aware that many people use Colas to deal with many of the gut rots you get there ?

I am however suprised at how no one has yet mentioned Coke's hilarious failure in the bottled water market in Britain ?

Given the bottles consume water in their manufacture, factories need a lot of cleaning, owrkers have toilets, etc, I suspect that bottled water from any supplier uses not much less water than Colas.

[edodgy]

Dc I agree with all that you are saying but the point of the article was that the Coca-Cola company is one of the leading sponsors of the World Water Forum and that this is somewhat ironic.

[bigbaubleeyes]

From a commercial perspective its obvious coke are going to support a cause they have a vested interest in as it is a raw material they consume in order to produce their product - there are a lot of reciprical relationships in business - the water forum get their money coke get in return possible contribution to decisions and a certain level of cooperation from the water people (posiibly). The water forum may not be able to fund projects if they didn't get this type of financial support and possibly industrial contacts. However Coke may be able to right off this type of sponsorship against tax due - depends if water has charitable status or not?

[bigbaubleeyes]

As for India you must remeber that they provide jobs for people, it improves the countries export levels and large companies usually invest in large civil projects when they intially locate their possibly infrastructure which is mutually beneficial.

[edodgy]

Yeah I understand all that,I was just answering Dc's question about why the subject of this thread/article is coca cola and not any of the other companies she mentions.

[bigbaubleeyes]

Yes i know what you mean - people are like that about McDonalds too. The production of computer chips, sim cards, chip n pin card chips use a lot of water also.

[DominiConnor]

As bigbauble says, pretty much any other manufacturing process uses more water than cola.

In particular silicon fabrication as used in chips and solar cells has been found to release bad chemicals into the water table, and it's costing big money to even partially clear it up.
By "bad" in this context I'm not talking of the mild toxicity of phosphric acid or sugar, or even wimpy ions like cyanide. We're talking stuff that is harmnful damn near down to single molecules.

The gold in chip & pin is produced by cocktails of nasty chemicals, and large amounts of water. One of the most porfitable gold mines in the world is actually the waste tip from older ones from when they didn't have such aggressive chemistry.

Probably the greatest threat to global water supplies is actually biofuels. The fertilisers used to make them run off, and you get nasties from this as well as the pesticides. This will probably we worse than growing for food.
Firstly, you don't really care about pesticide residue in fuel, and of course it will be a very valuable crop since it will happen when oil prices asymptote.

[peacedove]

The tobacco industry had supported sports, to prop up its image, and to give a false impression that smoking doesn't hurt.