Coca-Cola Co.

Sugary sodas: The new tobacco?

October 7, 2010

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has a controversial idea: Prohibit food stamp recipients from using them to buy sugary sodas.

While, as a rule, I would prefer that the government stay out of people’s choices about what to eat, drink, or smoke, and who to invite into their beds, and while I admire the Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo for much of the corporate-responsibility work they do, particularly around the environment, I say: Bravo!

Why? Tax dollars ought not to be used to subsidize people’s purchases of sugared drinks that make them fat and sick, and lead them to then require more government support when they enter the subsidized health-care system.

This isn’t a simple or clear-cut issue. It wouldn’t, I think, be smart or practical to try to exclude other fatty foods from the food stamp program. In fact, if we are going to try to guide people’s choices, I’d rather see incentives given to those who use food stamps to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, ideally locally grown. (See Chef to the rich, advocate for the poor.)

But the government is drawing lines already. Food stamps cannot be use to buy cigarettes, beer, wine or prepared foods from restaurants. The question is, on which side of that line should sodas belong?

In an op-ed today in The Times, Thomas Farley, New York City’s health commissioner, and Richard Daines, New York state’s health commissioner, make the argument well:

Over the past 30 years, consumption of sugary beverages in the United States has more than doubled, in parallel with the rise in obesity, to the point where nearly one-sixth of an average teenager’s calories now come from these drinks. Some 57 percent of adults in New York City and 40 percent of children in New York City public schools are overweight or obese.

…And substantial health care costs arise from this trend: obesity-related illnesses cost New York State residents nearly $8 billion a year in medical costs, or $770 per household. All of us pay the price through higher taxes.

Poor people will still be able buy sodas, of course–just not with taxpayer money.

For companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, which will fight this idea through the American Beverage Association, the message here should be clear: your future does not like in selling sugary sodas that are bad for people’s health, at least not if you want to be seen as companies that do good. Increasingly, these products will be stigmatized, as tobacco has been over the years. To its credit, the beverage industry has begun to recognize this by diversifying its product mix and removing full-calorie sodas from schools.

The mayor’s proposal now goes to the Obama administration’s agriculture department. Should be interesting to see how the feds respond.

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What’s your “water footprint”?

September 8, 2010

What’s the best way to save water?

Hint: It’s not by taking a quick shower. Or using a dual-flush toilet. Or planting native grasses rather than a thirsty lawn.

Those are all good practices, but you’ll make more of a difference if you skip your next cheeseburger. Or — surprisingly — order a Coke instead of a glass of orange juice.

A smaller footprint

This, at least, is one conclusion to be drawn from a report issued today by The Coca-Cola Co. and the Nature Conservancy, with the decidedly unsexy name of Product Water Footprint Assessments: Practical Application in Corporate Water Stewardship [PDF, download].  The name may be uninspired but the 48-page report makes for interesting reading and not only if your business, like Coca-Cola’s, depends on access to clean water.

“We don’t have a business without water,” says Denise Knight, who is the water and sustainable agriculture director for Coca-Cola. As the world’s largest beverage company (2009 revenues: $31 billion), Coca-Cola has focused on water as an environmental issue for nearly a decade. Knight, who joined in 2005 to spearhead the company’s water and ag work, spoke to me by phone from Stockholm, where it’s World Water Week, an occasion for thousands to gather to discuss global water issues.

Coca-Cola has recognized for years that water is a risk factor in its business; the company got a wake-up call after it was accused of hogging too much water in India. About five years ago, it set a number of aggressive water conservation goals, mostly focused on the efficient use and treatment of water when making its products.

It made sense for the company and its bottlers to begin by focusing on their own operations, which they can control.  But a big reason why Coca Cola now sees value in measuring the water footprint of its products (as opposed to the efficiency of its bottling plants) is that product footprints place water in a wider context,  one that encompasses not just the direct use of water in a factory but its indirect use in the company’s supply chain–in the fields, if you will.

Agriculture, in other words, matters a lot  when it comes to using water wisely. One data point: It takes 1,000 times more water to grow food for an individual than to meet that person’s needs for drinking, according to the report.

So what’s a water footprint? The report says:

A product water footprint is the total volume of freshwater consumed, directly and indirectly, to produce a product.

That may sound simple, but it’s not. The Nature Conservancy and Coca-Cola report uses methodology developed by academics and others who are part of the Water Footprint Network, a Dutch nonprofit. It makes distinctions among three kinds of water–green water which is the rainwater stored in soil and used for growing crops, blue water which is the water from rivers, lakes and acquifers used for growing crops or in manufacturing or in the products themselves, and grey water which is the volume of freshwater needed to assimilate pollutants created in agriculture and manufacturing. (And you thought carbon footprints were complicated!) Further complexity arises from the fact that water, unlike carbon, is a local resource, and usage should therefore be considered in the context of the local watershed. [click to continue…]

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In search of the perfect (Coke) bottle

November 30, 2009

plantbottle1Since joining The Coca-Cola Co. in 1997, Scott Vitters has gone to work most days with one question on his mind:

“How do we get to our vision of a 100% renewable, 100% recyclable bottle?”

It’s a simple question, with anything but a  simple answer—getting to a renewable, zero-waste bottle requires technology breakthroughs, favorable economics that will drive recycling, changes in human behavior and supporting policy from governments around the country, if not around the world.

This winter, though, Coca-Cola is taking a meaningful  step towards its goal with the introduction of what it calls a PlantBottle – a bottle made of PET plastic, 30% of which is sourced from Brazilian sugar cane and molasses.

That puts Coke on the road to 100% renewable.

PET, meanwhile, is 100% recyclable—although actual recycling rates are far lower.

It’s a start.

“It’s incredibly exciting for us to be able to see a route forward to zero waste,” says Vitters, who is head of global sustainable packaging for Coca-Cola. [click to continue…]

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