Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Earth Hour Greenwashing

We were watching the tube last night and an ad came on for 'Earth Hour' and the ad ended with the Earth Hour logo accompanied by the logos of Coke and Sears. Last year, Earth Hour seemed like a lame exercise but seeing that Coke logo makes it clear that it's a ridiculous bit of corporate greenwashing.

Here how "green" Coke is:

Coke uses genetically modified ingredients in North America:
The company that churns out enough soft drink and juice products to fill one or more of the Great Lakes says it won't bow to pressure to avoid use of sweeteners made from genetically engineered crops, nor will it label its products as “biotech” or “non-biotech.”

Coke is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and the company tries to block shipments of Coke made with sugar coming from Mexico:
Coca-Cola downplays the appeal of the cane sugar version, insisting that "there's not a perceivable taste difference between Mexican Coke and Coke bottled in the U.S.," Martin said.
But fans of the import claim there's a world of a difference.
"It's got a much different, cleaner taste," Craven said. "You don't have that syrupy coat in your mouth after you drink it."

Coke is a major producer of bottled, treated tap water:
More and more environmentalists are beginning to question the purpose of lugging those heavy, inefficient, polluting bottles all over the Earth. The parent organization of the World Wildlife Fund, the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature, argues strongly that the product is a waste of money and is very environmentally unfriendly.

... hold on, that's the same group that organized Earth Hour. uurggghhh ...

Coke opposes deposit return bottle systems that would reduce the amount of plastic that finds its way into the environment, creating things like the Pacific Garbage Patch.
Canada's soft-drink industry has followed its U.S. counterpart in switching to non-refillable containers. The Canadian market share for soft drinks in refillable bottles declined from about 47 percent in 1985 to less than 5 percent in 1997...

However ...
Canada's beer industry, on the other hand, prefers the refillable bottle mainly because it is the least-expensive packaging option, says Usman Valiante, a consultant for the Brewers of Ontario [UVA]. The crucial cost savings come from Canada's near-100-percent return rates, which help ensure that bottles are reused 15-20 times [BAC]. Consumers inveterately return bottles and do not regard returning them as an inconvenience [YVON].

And if you're one of those Obama fans, note that in the US, Coke is a big donor/supporter of the Republicans.

I rarely touch Coke because I have a sweet tooth and love the sweetness and carbonation and I'm easily addicted. And I love the classic logo design. But it's incredibly fattening -- probably because of the HFCS -- and as much as I might crave the product, one would have to be an idiot to consider that company being anywhere close to being 'green'.

1:00 PM , # , |