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TechnoratiMy New Year Resolution is to Lose My Bottle – and Quit Coke
By the time you read this, my head will be thump-thumping - but this is not a standard-issue New Year's Day hangover. No. My New Year's resolution is to finally give up my addiction to two liquids that are trashing the lives of some of the poorest people on earth: bottled water, and Coke. In 2009, I'm determined to lose my bottle.
There's nothing more tempting than to imagine our luxuries appear fully-formed on the supermarket shelf. It seems they come from nowhere, and when we toss them away, they disappear back to nowhere. It's disconcerting to break through this haze and trace them back to their origins. How can something so ordinary and omnipresent - something we all glug down daily - be destructive? But I have finally forced myself to read two new book-length exposés of my favourite drinks.
Since I was a teenager, I have thought drinking water comes in bottles. I don't know when I stopped using the tap. I never paused to think that it costs 10,000 times more to drink from bottles, or to read the shelves full of studies showing that tap water is just as healthy and impossible to tell apart in blind tastings. But I am not alone. Globally, we spend $60bn (£41bn) a year on bottled water. Its sales now surpass beer and milk.
In her book Bottlemania, the investigative journalist Elizabeth Royte traces one of the great scams of our time: why are we paying a fortune for something we have running almost-free into our homes? In 1929, Charles Kettering, the director of General Motors Research, outlined one of the rules of modern consumerism: "Keep the consumer dissatisfied." If the customer is happy with what they've already got, where's the profit? So the bottled water industry began to promote a series of myths. They claimed tap water was filthy, when in the US and Europe it is the safest drinking water on earth. They claimed you need to drink eight glasses of water a day, based on a garbled misreading of a creaky 1940s study. They falsely promised better health and taste.
If the only people being suckered were those of us dumb enough to buy the bottled water, this would be a minor-league scandal - but look at one of the primary sources of mineral water for the developed world: Fiji. Every day, a million litres of freshwater are pumped from an aquifer beneath a rainforest on Vitu Levu and shipped 10,000 miles to Europe and to the US. "This water may come from one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth," the adverts coo - without mentioning that it also helps to destroy it. By the time you factor in making the bottles and shipping this heavy liquid half-way round the world, every bottle of mineral water is - in effect - filled a quarter of the way up with petrol. The fizz might as well be greenhouse gases dissolving into the atmosphere.
And what of the people on the island of Fiji? While we merrily sip their water, a third of Fijians have no clean water at all. There are regular outbreaks of typhoid and dengue fever on the island, culling children and the elderly first.
The bottled water companies claim it is justifiable to take these people's water. They say they are carbon-neutral because they buy "carbon offsets". But as I've argued before, the evidence shows carbon offsets are a con - a way of salving our consciences, not the environment. Then they say they put money back into Fiji. But last July, the government there decided to introduce a tax on the bottled water being shipped off the island to pay for clean water for ordinary Fijians. The bottling companies went ballistic and threatened to shut down factories. The government gave up. The typhoid continues.
And what of my caffeine fix? I would have it running intravenously into my veins 24/7 if I could - but the comedian-activist Mark Thomas has persuaded me, in his excellent new book Belching Out The Devil: Global Adventures With Coca-Cola, that I have to find a different dealer to Coke.
In Carepa in north-western Colombia, Coca-Cola has a fairly typical bottling plant. Until 1994, the workforce was unionised, and successfully bargained for the basic workplace benefits we all want: bonuses, overtime and healthcare. But the corporation wanted to cut costs - and around the same time, the armed gangs arrived. The far-right militia the AUC presents itself as "the defenders of business freedom" in Colombia - they massacre trade unionists.
Soon after they showed up, Enrique Gomez Granado - one of the Coke-plant union leaders - was shot in the face on his doorstep, in front of his wife and kids. Five more union leaders were hunted down and murdered. There was, as Thomas puts it, "a campaign against the union at the Coca-Cola plant". The workers at the factory claim their plant manager would sit outside the factory with AUC paramilitaries, laughing and joking with them. Once the union was destroyed, the managers of the bottling plant promptly slashed the workers' wages: experienced workers went from earning $380 a month to $130.
At first, Coke said they weren't responsible for the behaviour of their subcontractors - even though they own a controlling share in this bottling company. Then they said "we take accusations regarding labour rights violations seriously". But in Carepa, Thomas found that "to this day, the Coca-Cola Company has not investigated the alleged links of Colombian bottling plant managers with the paramilitaries, despite a man being shot dead under their logo". Still the death-threats continue, pledging anyone "bad-mouthing the Coca-Cola Corporation... will be dealt with as they prefer: death, torture, cut into pieces, coup de grace. No more protests!"
This is not a lone horror-story. Thomas found children working for Coke contractors in El Salvador, and workers in Turkey beaten for trying to join a union. But the most striking story is from Plachimada, a village in Kerala, India. In the 1990s Coke opened a plant and began pumping half a million litres a day out of the underground aquifer. Suddenly the water in Plachimada's wells turned bad. A lab report for the BBC found it was now "so acidic it would burn up your insides. Clothes could tear in such water, food will rot, crops will wither". The village's children had to stop going to school and spend all day fetching water from far away.
As compensation, Coke's Indian subsidiary gave the local villagers their left-over industrial sludge to use as fertiliser. Incredibly, another test by the BBC found the "fertilizer" was filled with poisons. The doctors who examined it warned it could cause kidney failure or severe mental disability. Responding to this study, Sunil Gupta, Coca-Cola India's vice-president, said: "It's good for them because they are poor."
Yes, it will be annoying for me not to have my favourite drinks. But it's considerably more annoying to watch your children die of typhoid while your fresh water is being shipped off for the rich to quaff, or to be shot in the face for running a trade union. In 2009, I don't want to drink oil, or blood.
35 Comments so far
Show AllCheers on the article, and I agree on the personal resolution. I'd like to see union people in the U.S. and other first world countries picketing Coke plants and HQ buildings. I organize with the IWW and may talk to some of the people in my local branch about doing this as an international solidarity action.
I also don't drink Bacardi because of my opposition to U.S. imperialism against Cuba:
"Embittered Bacardi helmsman Jose Pepin Bosch bought a surplus B-26 bomber with the hopes of bombing Cuban oil refineries (the bold plan was foiled when a picture of the bomber appeared on the front page of The New York Times). He was also allegedly involved in the CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro; documents uncovered during Congressional investigations into John F. Kennedy's death bring to light a message outlining how he had plans to assassinate Castro, his brother (Raúl Castro) and Che Guevara. The RECE (Cuban Representation in Exile) also receives funding from Bacardi family members.
"More recently, Bacardi lawyers were influential in the drafting of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act which sought to extend the scope of the United States embargo against Cuba.[7] In 1999 Otto Reich, a lobbyist in Washington on behalf of Bacardi Rum, drafted section 211 of the 1999 Omnibus appropriations act, a bill that became known as the Bacardi Act. Section 211 denied trademark protection to Cuban businesses products expropriated after the Cuban revolution, a provision keenly sought by the Bacardi family. The act was aimed primarily at Havana Club brand in America, which had been registered by the Cuban government.[8] Section 211 has been challenged un-successfully by the Cuban government and the European Union in US courts; however, the act has been ruled illegal by the WTO (August 2001). The U.S. Congress has yet to re-examine the matter."
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacardi
While that article makes it sound as if the fate of the "Havana Club" trademark infringement by Bacardi is up in the air in U.S. courts, this article clearly says that a rum called "Havana Club" is now legally sold in the U.S. by the Bacardi family:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_Club_(Bacardi)
Thus, if you live in the U.S., you may think you're buying a product that supports Cuba and in reality be supporting a company which tried to bomb Cuba with a surplus bomber.
Bacardi? Really? Hmm...one more to my boycott list! (Thank God, there's always choice ;)
Highintel: Can we do better?
Spell Eveian backward, see what they think of bottled water users.
You mean people still drink Coke? And they trust those companies that sell those bottles of water? Use common sense people, it's a new thing.
I stopped drinking all soda pop more than thirty years ago, but not for environmental or health reasons. My taste had simply changed, after being a teenage sugar-holic, and the gooey sweetness of soft drinks didn't appeal to me anymore. (I tried an ice-cold Coke a few years ago and the overbearing sweetness nearly gagged me -- I couldn't finish more than a couple of sips.)
These days I drink water, dry wine, beer, ale and black coffee or plain tea (the artificial sweeteners are worse than sugar), and the only sweet food I like is dark chocolate. Once you quit the daily Coke/Pepsi fix, your taste buds seem to open up to other flavors after a couple of weeks, and you can enjoy complex bitter and subtle flavors more.
Aside from that, a good friend who used to start the day with a can of Coke just got out of the hospital after a painful attack of kidney stones caused by too many soft drinks. He gets his morning caffeine rush from unsweetened tea these days -- doctor's orders.
It's a shame that US food corporations infantilize adults by pushing overly-sweetened beverages and HFCS or artificially-sweetened processed foods on America, but it works out for their bottom line, as it creates lifelong caffeine-enslaved junkies with a sweet tooth that can never be satisfied.
So, what other products does Coca Cola make? It won't do to only stop drinking Coke.
JH January 3rd, 2009 6:51 pm:"So, what other products does Coca Cola make? It won't do to only stop drinking Coke."
It's frightening -- everything from soft drinks to fruit drinks to bottled water. They have 700 brands alone of low- and no-calorie beverages. You can read it right at the horse's mouth:
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/brands/brandlist.html
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/brands/
I met a driver for Coke once -- after skimming the company's website, I no longer wonder why he said, "No kidding, they own the world."
They created Fanta during WW2 to sell in Germany :-)
thats not true for the bottled water here in Europe, we drink it from glass bottles which are recycled of course and the water comes from natural springs which are all over Germany where i live and naturally in france, italy and spain as well as other countries. however I do worry when i visit the US not only about the plastic bottled water but about the tap water as well!
regarding Coke, quit that habit decades ago!!
Recycle-able glass bottles. What a novel idea (sarcasm -- USA had recyclable soda and beer bottles for many decades.)
-- EKATON --
Yeah, plastic bottles getting hot in a wharehouse are bad news.
Causes some kind of polymer molecule or something to leach into the water: causes all kinds of health disasters including cancer. So if your choice is bottled water or tap: choose tap. We use various filter strategies, but the cleverist is the little filter that sits on top of you kitchen sink facet; pursomething. Has a valve whereby you normally bypass the filter to wash dishes; then when you want a drink you flip it and it forces water through the microfilter.
Clever as hell. Available at costco.
My friend and I just purchased an alkaline/ionizing water purifier (Rettin for about $1500) and we had the plumber attach it in the laundry room into the studs just above the washer and piggyback it into the incoming cold water line ($150). It's really cool.
The water tastes fantastic! We have a few large, glass containers and every morning we fill them up and put them on the counter for the day. I have a 2 quart glass pitcher and I use to prepare my water and put some lemon slices in it.
At about $2/gallon of "Poland Springs" at the grocery, this filtering system will pay for itself in no time at all!
Read these testimonials from M.D.'s about how great ionized/alkaline water is for the human body:
http://ionmicrowater.com/expertsay.htm
I understand this water cannot be "bottled" as it loses it's ionization within 72 hours. But why not get your neighborhood together to buy one of these fantastic machines and share the water? You just tap into the city line and the machine removes all the chlorine and bad chemicals and leaves the good minerals etc.
Just a thought.
And A Happy, Peaceful, Successful and Healthy 2009 to everyone at Commondreams!
Thanks for the info on alkaline/ionizing water purification.
Another thing about water bottled in plastic is that heat causes a dangerous chemical to leach out of the plastic into the water. The chemical name escapes me at the moment but you could google it. I never drink bottled water that has sat inside a car in warm weather. And I want to stop drinking bottled water altogether. I will definitely be looking into alkaline/ionizing purifiers.
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
here's a great reason to not drink Coke...it's horrible for your health. Any kind of soda is bad for you, end of story. Drinking this stuff on a regular basis is a bad choice if you care about your health, whether the company kills its employees or not (not to say we shouldn't get outraged when this happens, though). Any kind of processed sugar is bad for you, and if your intake is extremely high you run a serious risk of developing adult onset diabetes.
Heidi
Drink 8 ounces of your favorite bottled water. Then drink 8 ounces of water from my tap at home in Mechanicsburg PA. Then tell me which one tastes absolutely horrid. In the shower my hot water has a horrible acrid odor. The tap water has a gagging "chemical" quality in taste. Possibly I should try one of those home water purifiers. Has anyone here had experience with any of those? Do they remove the bad taste from the tap water?
Thanks.
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
EKATON January 2nd, 2009 5:33 pm, I've been using a Brita filter pitcher for years. (You pour the water in a top reservoir and it filters naturally through active charcoal into a pitcher on the bottom.) The water in my area tends to be high in chlorine, and the Brita filter takes away the 'bleachy' odor and taste. The Brita pitcher kit costs around $30.00, and the filters, which you replace every three months, depending on usage, cost about $10.00. I haven't found anything cheaper and as reliable.
We don't have a lot of excess money (nowhere near the $1,500 mentioned above for the ionizer filter) so we purchased from our local Lowes (Loews?) a G.E. (I know! I know! Sorry, but us poor folks have very limited options.) under-sink, in-line, dual-filter arrangement that took me about 30 minutes to install. It cost under a $100. The problem with all of these, of course, regardless of size (under-sink or whole-house), is that the filters (or, in the case of whole-house, the filtering material) has to be replaced every month or X number of gallons. The filters we use cost about $35 (on-line from FiltersFast.com including shipping) and they not only remove lead and chlorine, as well as a whole bunch of other little nasties, but DEFINITELY improve both taste and odor.
D.C. city water is notoriously over-chlorinated. I sure do miss N.Y.C. tap water; delivered to the city from upstate lakes and reservoirs over miles and miles of granite aqueducts that naturally aerate and filter the water - some of the best-tasting city water I have ever drank!
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
I can't afford $1500 either. But I can afford a unit similar to the one you just described. Considering the approximate $100 for the initial install and even the occasional $35 for a new filter, the water has to be MUCH cheaper per pint, quart or gallon than bottled water from the convenience or grocery stores. This type of filter is going to be my next purchase. Then I can refill stainless steel or glass containers for portability. Thanks for the input!!
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
I have a very shallow well that is definitely polluted, but it tastes great. I use inexpensive charcoal filtration products which pretty much eliminates the lead and arsenic. I'm still drinking some bacteria and pesticide, but after a lot of years, it ain't killed me yet.
Greg R January 2nd, 2009 6:49 pm, to be on the safe side as far as bacteria and pesticides, not to mention fecal matter, you can buy PuR water purification tablets at 10 cents a pack that will remove 99.999 percent of the nasty stuff from your drinking water. Here's some info:
"Procter and Gamble PuR Water Purification Sachets
"Procter and Gamble has recently developed a new water purification system that uses a PuR water purification packet. Each packet costs about 10 cents and provides 10 liters of drinking water—enough for an average family for two days.
"The purification system is very easy to use. Simply add a PuR tablet to 10 liters of water and stir for 5 minutes. The water becomes noticeably clear except for a small deposit of sediment that must be filtered. After 20 minutes, the water is safe to drink."
-- http://marriottschool.byu.edu/selfreliance/wiki/controller.cfm?page=60
Now, this is if you are using dirty water -- since you're using filtered water, it would no doubt work easier and quicker.
Unfortunately it's made by corporate giant P&G, but maybe you can Google and find another manufacturer.
Human beings prefer to be in vogue even if it means an arm and a leg. When they will start paying for unpolluted air to breath is when they will realise the folly of following the crowd.
The product is un-healthy and the corporation's manners are ... well see for yourself.
RESEARCH FINDINGS :
From 1966 onward Coca-Cola has been a stauch supporter of Israel.[4]
In 1997 the Government of Israel Economic Mission honored Coca-Cola at the Israel Trade Award Dinner for its continued support of Israel for the last 30 years and for refusing ro abide by the Arab League boycott of Israel. [1]
[ In contrast Pepsi abided by the Arab League boycott of Israel which ended in May 1991, after 1992 Pepsi is also trading in Israel - see [2] ]
In 2001 the Coca-Cola World Headquarters hosted and was the main sponser of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce Awards Gala.[5].
It has been revealed that Coca-Cola Israel sponsers training programs for its workers on subjects including the Israeli-Arab conflict. The course content is created by a company funded by the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government.[6]
In February 2002, Coca-Cola teamed up with "Friends of Israel" and National Hillel to cosponser a lecture given by the infamous zionist correspondent Linda Gradstein at the University of Minnesota.[3]
In July 2002, it has been announced that Coca-Cola, in return for millions in incentives from the Israeli government, is to build a new plant on stolen Palestinian land at Kiryat Gat.[7]
In October 2005, Coca-Cola increased its investment in Israel by buying a 51 percent controlling interest in the Tavor Winery.[11]
http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-coca-cola.html
Good for Coke. Forced to choose between the imperfect democracy that is Israel, and the Arab thugocracies which surround it, the decision is not hard...
"Imperfect democracy" is a generous and laughable way to describe Israel. The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel claims as its own, are "stateless persons" with no rights a all. How democratic is that? A state that establishes its democracy on someone else's land through terrorism and ethnic cleansing is far worse than "imperfect."
This is the kind of story you'll never see in the MSM. I quit drinking pop 30 years ago when I left high school. I never did drink bottled water unless there was no other choice. I've been warning people about Coke and Pepsi for years, often leading to ridicule. So I close my remarks with a quote: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."
The reason soda is so addictive is because unlike the earlier times when it came out, the modern versions are filled with the addictive high fructose corn syrup. The diet versions are even worse as they're substituted by aspartame. Hang in there though. I know how it feels to be ridiculed by others when trying to educate them. As the collapse continues, some of those people will learn their lessons the hard way. Maybe?
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
I had long ago given up bottled water. And now, I guess I need to take a hard look at my other choices, starting with Coke.
Though off-topic, I have long noticed that many of the relatively well-off Indians and Chinese do not seem to be much bothered by the environmental damage or social inequalities, all brought in the name of 'rapid development', as long as they were not affected personally. Though there are others in India who are fighting valiantly against the multinationals' often illegal acts, I wonder how they stack up against India's neo-rich and the Indian mainstream media.
Highintel: Can we do better?
We should only look at the US influence on the developing Asian giants. Unfortunately, English is taught to school children in both China and India. Who promotes this and for what reason? We should only look at the US "chamber of commerce" to find the wrong reason. It is all about opening new markets so the deception may be expanded from 300 million Americans to 2.3 billion Asians. We're very familiar with the deception rackets. We've been laughing or shrugging or sighing them off for decades in the US. Do we really want the entire planet addicted to the Madison Av. profit commodities? We can't progress to a higher spiritual plane while continuing to shrug off Madison Av., the snake oil salesman. Can we bury this legacy already and move to the higher plane? Coke is a gargantuan example of a "means justifying an end" racket (the end being economic activity), a generic concept taught in US ivy league business schools for decades as the template for emulation. The racket is completely detached from our real needs. We really don't need giant enterprises serving mass market commodities. That is a thoughtless want, not a thoughtful need. We can fool ourselves that we are better off satisfying our wants before our needs, but we can't escape from the negative fallout of fooling ourselves and failing to serve our needs. Do we really want 2.3 billion Asians to lose their connection with their own needs? The solution, which largely solves all human-induced problems for all the planet, is to starve all the power centers of our individual exchange/association. This requires individual enlightenment, thought, action. The truth about water has to be fully disseminated. The best source of water for human hydration is fresh plant food. The second best source is solar distillation as part of an independent homestead.
I have always thought bottled water was insanely stupid.
Just common sense. Too bad there is so little of it in the world today.
My version of bottled water is to buy a gallon jug of Arizona Tea, and when I finish it I rinse it out and fill it up with tap water, and take it wherever I want to go...a gallon of cold tap water that costs almost nothing to fill is far better than 20 ounces of 'bottled' water that costs over a dollar.
Some people accept the idea of bottled water when the homes they live in are decades old and repair is just too expensive. And much as I am disgusted with bottled water, why the sudden outrage? Soda and juice consist mainly of water and they've been bottled for decades. And what about flouride in public water? I think you need to look at the various reasons in addition to being brainwashed on why some people prefer bottled water over tap water.
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
"As compensation, Coke's Indian subsidiary gave the local villagers their left-over industrial sludge to use as fertiliser. Incredibly, another test by the BBC found the "fertilizer" was filled with poisons. The doctors who examined it warned it could cause kidney failure or severe mental disability. Responding to this study, Sunil Gupta, Coca-Cola India's vice-president, said: "It's good for them because they are poor." "
At this rate, religious terrorists in India are potatoes compared to the corporate interests. Sunil Gupta is no better than Marie Antoinette.
As far as coke goes, coke used to not be so shitty when we the people took the time to make our own. If you want to stifle big soda, why not look for and purchase tools to make your own healthy soda for a change?
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Try Jones Soda, it's much better.
Thanks zmann. Will check it out.
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota