The Privatization of Water in India: How Coca-Cola Destroys the Aquifer
Never Mind the Greenwash - Coca Cola Can Never Be 'Water Neutral'
Following a series of disastrous failures in India, one of
Coca-Cola’s most important markets, the company is desperate to rebuild
its reputation by claiming ‘water neutrality’. But the idea is absurd,
writes Amit Srivastava, and does nothing to benefit the communities that
suffer from the depleted aquifers it pumps from.
The Coca-Cola company is planning to announce that it is close to replenishing all the water it uses“back to communities and nature” by the end of 2015, well ahead of schedule.
It
will take more than PR puff to restore Coca-Cola’s reputation in India.
Wall-painted sign in Bangalore, India. Photo: Syed Nabil Aljunid via
Flickr (CC BY-NC).
will take more than PR puff to restore Coca-Cola’s reputation in India.
Wall-painted sign in Bangalore, India. Photo: Syed Nabil Aljunid via
Flickr (CC BY-NC).
As campaigners that have closely scrutinized Coca-Cola’s operations
in India for over a decade, we find the company’s assertions on
balancing water use to be misleading.
The company’s track record of managing water resources in and around
its bottling operations is dismal, and the announcement is a public
relations exercise designed to manufacture an image of a company that
uses water sustainably – far removed from the reality on the ground.
The impetus for
Coca-Cola to embark upon its ambitious water conservation programs
globally stems from its experience in India, where the company has been
the target of communities across the country holding it accountable for
creating water shortages and pollution.
The company has faced crisis in India due to their mismanagement of water resources, including
- the forced closure of their bottling plant by government authorities in Kerala in 2005,
- the closure of its 15 year old plant in Varanasi last year,
- the refusal by government authorities to allow a fully-built expansion plant to operate in Varanasi in August 2014,
- a proposed plant in Uttarakhand cancelled in April 2014,
- and the withdrawal of the land allocated for a new bottling plant by the government in Tamil Nadu due to large scale community protests in April 2015.
