Window Dressing or Washing - Coke in China

CO: Undoubtedly, corporations taking steps to reduce their ecological footprints are a step in the right direction, but how can we judge corporate sincerity?

• “Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage maker, intends to make up for the 290 billion liters (76 billion gallons) of water…the company and its bottlers use each year to make Coke, Sprite, Fanta and other drinks.”
• Can Coca-Cola be present in China without condoning human rights and environmental abuses?
  
• Coca Cola has a delicious flavour but it may leave a bitter taste in its workers throats, as seen in its union relations in Columbia - Coke's Columbia site
  
• Coke has stated: "Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining
  The Company respects our employees' right to join, form or not to join a labor union without fear of reprisal, intimidation or harassment. Where employees are represented by a legally recognized union, we are committed to establishing a constructive dialogue with their freely chosen representatives. The Company is committed to bargaining in good faith with such representatives."
• Coca Cola recently won the Polaris Institute's Corporate Greenwashing Award
• ** Full disclosure, this author drinks more Coke than his teeth would prefer.
  

In China, corporations cultivate profits and conscience

The Associated Press Published: June 5, 2007

BEIJING: The Coca-Cola Co. said it will revamp bottling practices globally to save water and fund conservation efforts to clean up stretches of the Yangtze and other major rivers, highlighting a surge in social and environmental spending by multinationals in China.

Under the program, Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage maker, intends to make up for the 290 billion liters (76 billion gallons) of water — or enough drinking water for New York city for just over two months — the company and its bottlers use each year to make Coke, Sprite, Fanta and other drinks.

To do that, the company wants to recycle factory wastewater and reduce the amount of water used in rinsing, cleaning, heating, cooling and other parts of the manufacturing process.

"Essentially the pledge is to return every, every drop we use back to nature," Coca-Cola Chief Executive Officer E. Neville Isdell said Tuesday at a news conference in Beijing.

"We need to think holistically about the availability of water ... for the ongoing sustainability of our business," Isdell said.

In addition, Atlanta-based Coca-Cola will fund a US$20 million (€15 million) project with the World Wildlife Foundation to protect sections of major rivers in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, including China's badly polluted Yangtze River, the world's third longest.

...

Coca-Cola's sales by volume have seen double digit growth in China over the past few years and the mainland is now the company's fourth-largest market.

What is clear is that many companies have been spurred into action to prove their good citizenship in part by media attention. Over the past year, such Western icons as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Yum Brands Inc.'s KFC and Pizza Hut have been pilloried in Chinese media for perceived unfair or predatory practices.

Chinese leaders used to be leery of campaigns by foreign companies or groups to improve local environmental or labor conditions, suspecting they were aimed at undermining domestic companies that had neither the financial or human resources to meet the same high standards.

But over the past three years, the communist leadership has been looking for ways to redistribute the wealth created by economic reforms more evenly. Under the slogan "building a harmonious society," the government has embraced corporate social responsibility for foreign and Chinese companies alike.

One Chinese activist group launched a campaign this year to alert consumers to companies that violate environmental or labor standards. Ma Jun, the head of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said he hoped the campaign would shame the offenders and drive up the costs of violations by convincing consumers to boycott the companies goods.

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