The Coke Machine Part 4
"Somewhere in there, the stalling began in earnest," says soda activist Simon, who watched negotiations unfold. "We didn't hear from them to schedule a meeting, and I got nervous and said something was going on." As it turned out, she was right. c.o.ke was barraged by negative publicity that spring, and even Governor Rell bowed to public opinion, supporting a new bill in Connecticut to ban sugary soft drinks, and diet drinks and Powerade. c.o.ke threatened to pull school scholarships if the ban pa.s.sed, prompting state attorney general Richard Blumenthal to decry c.o.ke's "unconscionable practices" and announce an investigation of the Coca-Cola Foundation for violation of its nonprofit status. Despite c.o.ke's threats, the state legislature pa.s.sed the bill in April 2006.
c.o.ke had had enough, calling a press conference a week later along with other soft drink companies to announce its surrender. Reporters from The New York Times The New York Times, The Washington Post The Washington Post, and other newspapers a.s.sembled to hear the details, when Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, strode to the podium. By his side was Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the American Beverage a.s.sociation's Neely, and Coca-Cola North America president Don Knauss. "I don't think there are any villains here," said Clinton with his patented earnest delivery, going on to call the soda companies "courageous" for dealing with the obesity issue head-on. Then with great fanfare, he announced new guidelines that the industry had agreed to limiting soda in schools, which had been negotiated by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a partnership between the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart a.s.sociation.
The agreement-which had been in the works since fall 2005-was significantly weaker than what the companies had already agreed to with Daynard, Gardner, and the other anti-obesity activists over the same period, allowing diet drinks, sports drinks, and juice drinks of up to 12 ounces to be sold in high schools. Moreover, unlike the enforceable guidelines under discussion with the lawyers, the deal would be completely voluntary and implemented over the course of three years. Advertising wasn't even addressed.
Daynard found out about the agreement the way most people did-reading the newspaper. "I think there was considerable bad faith on their part," he says. "They did not tell us they were simultaneously negotiating with another group." Daynard now thinks their talks were nothing but a sham to stall litigation. Even so, he puts the best face on the agreement-arguing that if not for the threat of a lawsuit, the companies would never have taken even the more modest measure of getting rid of sugary soda within three years. "When we began, we thought that was impossible," he says.
Even as they were staging a tactical retreat, c.o.ke and Pepsi were able to save face, stressing at the news conference that soda could be part of a well-rounded diet. In the fall, the ABA rolled out a $10 million ad campaign to "educate" parents about the new policy. They failed to mention that some schools with long-term contracts would not be able to partic.i.p.ate, at least not without buying out the companies to amend the contracts. One school in Wisconsin learned it would have to pay $200,000 to remove high-calorie beverages from vending machines. The Portland, Oregon, school district was told it would have to pay back $600,000 to remove diet soda after the district's wellness policy banned them. Local activists with Oregon's Community Health Partnership cried foul-pointing out that a contract is something that can be renegotiated at any time if both sides are willing. It took six months, however, for c.o.ke to agree to new terms, under which the school forfeited all commissions from drink sales, though it was allowed to keep the up-front fee for signing the contract. they were staging a tactical retreat, c.o.ke and Pepsi were able to save face, stressing at the news conference that soda could be part of a well-rounded diet. In the fall, the ABA rolled out a $10 million ad campaign to "educate" parents about the new policy. They failed to mention that some schools with long-term contracts would not be able to partic.i.p.ate, at least not without buying out the companies to amend the contracts. One school in Wisconsin learned it would have to pay $200,000 to remove high-calorie beverages from vending machines. The Portland, Oregon, school district was told it would have to pay back $600,000 to remove diet soda after the district's wellness policy banned them. Local activists with Oregon's Community Health Partnership cried foul-pointing out that a contract is something that can be renegotiated at any time if both sides are willing. It took six months, however, for c.o.ke to agree to new terms, under which the school forfeited all commissions from drink sales, though it was allowed to keep the up-front fee for signing the contract.
The very public deal has led to perceptions that the school issue had been dealt with, saving c.o.ke's image and taking the wind out of a push for stronger legislation. Oregon is one of the few states to move ahead with a binding state law against soda in schools after the Clinton soda agreement-pushing through a law similar to California's tough standards in 2007. Even so, says the health partnership's Mary Lou Hennrich, an initial proposal to ban sports drinks and marketing fizzled when legislators, supported by the school administrators, pointed to the Clinton guidelines as the new standard. "Their att.i.tude was that now you've crammed this down our throats and we can't have sugar-sweetened beverages for sale, haven't you done enough?" A similar phenomenon happened in Utah, when the new state law to ban soda was specifically written with the Clinton guidelines in mind. In Oregon, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Rhode Island, the local affiliates of the American Heart a.s.sociation told Simon that their national headquarters had requested they stand down in supporting tougher laws. (A past president of the AHA denies this, saying that affiliates weren't counseled either way.) By 2008, thirty-four states had some combination of regulation or legislation curtailing soda in schools. Just eleven banned all sugar-sweetened soda; the rest allowed some portion of soda sales for some portion of the day. Only a few go beyond the voluntary guidelines adopted by the Clinton agreement: six ban sports drinks, five set calorie limits, and only one provides any kind of penalties for noncompliance. On a federal level, an effort led by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Lynn Woolsey to pa.s.s a bill to ban soda and sports drinks as foods of "minimal nutritional value" failed in 2007.
In the three years since the first announcement by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, there's mixed evidence that the voluntary guidelines pushed by industry have been successful. According to a study by a consultant funded by the American Beverage a.s.sociation, 98.8 percent of schools under contract with soda companies were in compliance with the guidelines by the 2009-2010 school year. Even more important, shipments of carbonated soft drinks to schools dropped by 95 percent compared to another ABA-funded survey in 2004. In high schools, sugar soft drinks fell from 47 to 7 percent of offerings, and water grew from 12 to 39 percent. While sports drinks did increase, from 13 to 18 percent of the total, total calories for all beverages were still down 88 percent. "It's a brand new day in America's schools when it comes to beverages," said the ABA's Neely in 2008. "Our beverage companies have slashed calories."
Some anti-soda activists, such as CSPI's Margo Wootan, grudgingly accept the ABA report, though they point out that much of that decrease in soda in schools has been due to binding state legislation. Others, however, look at the industry-funded study with a jaundiced eye, knowing how favorable those studies have been to the soda company biases in the past. At least one independent study leaves serious reason to doubt the trade a.s.sociation's figures. An annual survey by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Michigan found that in the 2008-2009 school year, only 30 percent of school administrators said they were implementing the guidelines, up from 25 percent the previous year. By contrast, 14 percent said they were not implementing them, and 55 percent-more than half-said they had never even heard of them.
Generally, the fight over schools has been a qualified victory for the anti-soda activists; if nothing else, it was a win in the area of perception; no longer would it be possible for people to drink soda without thinking about the potentially negative health consequences waiting for them inside the can. The fight affected c.o.ke's bottom line as well-stopping the runaway increases in soda sales for most of the previous century. In early 2006, soda sales fell in the United States for the first time in twenty years, by nearly 1 percent over the previous year. That was followed by several more consecutive years of sales drops-by 2.3 percent in 2007, 3 percent in 2008, and 2.1 percent in 2009.
Where the campaign was successful in changing the public's consumption of soda, it succeeded through a combination of public support and the vigorous support of the media, which thrives on stories of conflicts with clear battle lines and combatants on both sides-company executives, school administrators, dogged activists, and parents. However unfair it may have seemed to the soda companies to single out soft drinks as the primary cause of obesity and diabetes, the issue resonated with the public, who after all must have secretly suspected that pouring all of that sugar down their throats just couldn't be good for them in the long term.
The tactical decision to focus the fight on schools also helped to frame the issue in a way that was impossible for the public not to understand. As the campaign against tobacco did with Joe Camel and other instances of child marketing, it garnered the sympathy of the populace, which instinctively understands that even if adults are free to choose what they put inside their bodies, children need protection. Finally, the campaign made effective use of the power of the purse, speaking the language that school administrators and soda companies understood, whether it was Jackie Domac's grant to implement healthy food choices or d.i.c.k Daynard's threat to sue c.o.ke for damages.
Where the anti-soda forces failed, it was in removing the pressure it had so expertly marshaled just as it was beginning to bear fruit, taking away the cudgel of the lawsuit, their biggest weapon, as they began negotiating with c.o.ke and the other companies, who then had every incentive to stall until they could find a more favorable deal elsewhere. And by focusing so completely on the school issue, the campaign against soda lost a chance to talk about the messier but arguably more significant influence that runaway soft drink consumption has had on both adults and children outside the school walls.
In the end, it's debatable exactly how effective the fight against soda in schools has actually been in schools themselves. A 2008 study in Maine published by the Society for Nutrition Education compared intake of soda by kids at high schools where soda was banned with intake in schools where it wasn't, finding no difference in overall consumption. Another study, of 11,000 fifth-graders in forty states, found soft drink consumption by kids decreased just 4 percent after soda was banned at their elementary schools. After expending all of their political capital on the fight to get soda out of schools, however, activist groups have found it hard to make headway outside that realm. Putting warning labels on bottles or restricting serving sizes are almost a nonstarter, while recent attempts to push a state or national "soda tax"-Asa Candler's old nemesis-have been slow to catch on.
Whether or not the Clinton deal was a victory for activists, it certainly was one for c.o.ke, which was spared a public thrashing in the courts while tying their ship to one of the country's more popular public figures. Most important, the brand was kept intact, with Diet c.o.ke and c.o.ke Zero in the vending machines, and the Spencerian-script logo flashing brightly in the hallways. And there was evidence Isdell's pledge to turn around the company was being kept. Throughout his tenure, overall company growth continued to surpa.s.s a.n.a.lysts' expectations-with increases of 6 percent in 2007 and 5 percent in 2008. Much of that growth was thanks to the overseas market, which represents 80 percent of c.o.ke's total sales. But the Clinton deal staved off the worst of the slide in the United States. While sugar soft drinks continued to decline by a percentage point or two a year in the past few years, today's youth has hardly been the "lost generation" for soda, as one a.n.a.lyst had predicted in 2006.
And to make up the difference domestically, Isdell started a new round of product launches and acquisitions that took the battle to Pepsi on several new fronts, including a big new push on bottled water. c.o.ke might never achieve its once-upon-a-time dream of seeing the C on the tap stand for "c.o.ke." But if it couldn't beat water, it could do the next best thing: brand it.
FIVE.
The Bottled Water Lie The noise is deafening on the bottling floor of the Needham Heights Sales Facility, the largest Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ma.s.sachusetts and the sixteenth largest in the country. Cans of Diet c.o.ke swirl around in a giant silver whirligig, blinking lights indicating each is being filled with the proper amount of carbonated water and syrup. The din dies in the warehouse next door, where hundreds of thousands of cans and bottles of c.o.ke, Sprite, Nestle iced tea, Minute Maid juice, and other products under the Coca-Cola umbrella are stacked in rows as far as the eye can see, calling to mind the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But tucked amid these boxes is another whirring collection of machinery. Test tube-sized nipples of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic are dumped into a giant centrifuge, where they are blown by compressed air into 20-ounce bottles. On an adjoining piece of equipment, the full bottles reappear, filled to the brim with water. They trundle naked down the a.s.sembly line to get sealed and slapped with their label: Dasani.
It's here that c.o.ke's vaunted brand of bottled water is made, and where, by extension, the fortunes of the Coca-Cola Company were rescued. The actual process by which ordinary water is turned into Dasani is hidden inside a separate "water room," which the plant manager describes as a bunch of twenty-foot stainless-steel tubes through which the water is shot at high pressure to be filtered. No amount of pleading will persuade the Coca-Cola Enterprises press agent giving the tour today to allow a peek inside. Like the secret formula for Coca-Cola hidden deep inside an Atlanta safe-deposit box, the process behind creating Dasani is equally shrouded in mystique. And no wonder, since Dasani's brand image is even more important than Coca-Cola's to sell the product.
In coming to dominate the bottled water market, c.o.ke has had to pull a feat of behind-the-curtain wizardry every bit as impressive as turning Coca-Cola into a symbol of American pride and international goodwill a century earlier. Despite promising beginnings, however, Dasani has faced an even more damaging backlash, based not on individual health but on the health of the environment itself.
Even as awareness of the obesity crisis was beginning to hit, threatening sales of c.o.ke's trademark carbonated sodas, the company was readying its Plan B. In the summer of 1998, CEO Doug Ivester began toying with selling the most basic of beverages-water. The company had watched from the wings as other companies had made a fortune on the beverage, which the French company Perrier had introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. The fad had taken off quickly, after Perrier's marketers appealed to a new demographic of yuppies as conscious about their health as they were about the conspicuous consumption of paying top dollar for something others were getting for free. Perrier's profits from water rose from $20 million in its first year to $60 million by its second. awareness of the obesity crisis was beginning to hit, threatening sales of c.o.ke's trademark carbonated sodas, the company was readying its Plan B. In the summer of 1998, CEO Doug Ivester began toying with selling the most basic of beverages-water. The company had watched from the wings as other companies had made a fortune on the beverage, which the French company Perrier had introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. The fad had taken off quickly, after Perrier's marketers appealed to a new demographic of yuppies as conscious about their health as they were about the conspicuous consumption of paying top dollar for something others were getting for free. Perrier's profits from water rose from $20 million in its first year to $60 million by its second.
Starting in 1984, another French company, Evian, pioneered the use of lightweight bottles made of a clear plastic called polyethylene terephthalate (PET) just as the fitness craze was taking off, making the pink-and-red logo ubiquitous at the gym. Perrier stumbled briefly in 1990 when the supposedly pristine water was found contaminated with trace amounts of benzene, leading to a $160 million recall and cutting sales in half overnight. But the industry quickly recovered, led by the Swiss company Nestle, which swooped in to acquire Perrier, as well as dozens of other brands-Deer Park, Arrowhead, Calistoga, Poland Spring-that were left from America's first flirtation with bottled water at the turn of the last century. Between 1990 and 1999, bottled water sales shot up from $115 million a year to more than $5 billion.
With profit margins on water as high as 50 cents on a $1.50 bottle, c.o.ke and Pepsi couldn't resist entering a market that had been dominated by foreign companies. Instead of selling natural spring water, however, the cola giants didn't see why they couldn't just take the same water flowing through their bottling plants and package that that. Pepsi was first, shooting its purified water into a blue bottle with a squiggle evocative of snow-covered mountains.Voila, Aquafina.
c.o.ke could have gone the same route, licensing a new brand to its bottlers. But the Coca-Cola Company had always sold syrup, and there was no syrup that you could use to create water. Ivester stewed for the better part of 1998 before he hit upon the solution. c.o.ke scientists would formulate a proprietary mix of minerals that it would ship to bottlers to put in their purified tap water. This was its new new secret formula, which it could market as every bit as unique as c.o.ke's own. After much focus-grouping, c.o.ke created the perfect pan-national combination of syllables for its new beverage. Intended to signal relaxation and refreshment, the name Dasani could just as well be that of an Italian winemaker or an African tribe. secret formula, which it could market as every bit as unique as c.o.ke's own. After much focus-grouping, c.o.ke created the perfect pan-national combination of syllables for its new beverage. Intended to signal relaxation and refreshment, the name Dasani could just as well be that of an Italian winemaker or an African tribe.
Dasani actually wasn't c.o.ke's first entry into bottled water; it had bought Belmont Springs in the 1980s and Mendota Springs in the 1990s, both times suffering lackl.u.s.ter sales. But that was when water was a mere side venture to the runaway growth in sugary soda. Now water itself was the growth market. c.o.ke put the full weight of its advertising power behind a new $20 million campaign intended to both sell the product and grow the market itself.
c.o.ke targeted women, who consumer surveys showed were more focused on healthy living (and not coincidentally, more concerned with their kids' drinking so much soda). In the same way that "The Pause That Refreshes" had addressed the anxieties of workers suffering from grueling production schedules, c.o.ke played on the stresses of women struggling to balance the demands of the workplace and their responsibilities to home and family with new slogans such as "Life Simplified" and "Replenish the Source Within." In 2002, c.o.ke teamed up with Glamour Glamour magazine to give away an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York to the woman who wrote the best one hundred words about "Women at Their Best." Applicants were "encouraged to list the ways in which they pamper themselves, thereby replenishing their own spirit everyday" (no doubt scoring extra points if they replenished themselves with Dasani). magazine to give away an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York to the woman who wrote the best one hundred words about "Women at Their Best." Applicants were "encouraged to list the ways in which they pamper themselves, thereby replenishing their own spirit everyday" (no doubt scoring extra points if they replenished themselves with Dasani).
The marketing worked-by 2003, bottled water was the one bright spot in a disastrous year for c.o.ke. Bottled water sales were up to $8.5 billion overall-and Dasani had pa.s.sed Perrier, Evian, and San Pellegrino to become the second-best-selling brand behind Pepsi's Aquafina. And c.o.ke had yet to go international with Dasani-the arena where it always out-fought Pepsi. As the company planned to launch Dasani across the Atlantic, it seemed there might actually be life after soda pop after all.
For its big overseas splash, c.o.ke followed the same playbook it had for its soft drinks a century earlier, tackling the English-speaking world first. The launch for the United Kingdom was planned for March 2004, with drives the following month into Belgium and then France, the ultimate prize. The average French person drank more than twice what an American drank in bottled water, some 145 liters a year. Cracking big overseas splash, c.o.ke followed the same playbook it had for its soft drinks a century earlier, tackling the English-speaking world first. The launch for the United Kingdom was planned for March 2004, with drives the following month into Belgium and then France, the ultimate prize. The average French person drank more than twice what an American drank in bottled water, some 145 liters a year. Cracking that that market would be a sweet victory for the company. Just a couple of decades after France had introduced bottled water to the United States, America would be returning the favor under the banner of the quintessential American brand. For the UK, c.o.ke spared no expense, pouring 7 million ($13 million) into advertising, trumpeting the slogan "The more you live, the more you need Dasani." For weeks, billboards around London declared, "Prepare to get wet," and just before the launch, high-divers plummeted ninety feet with flaming capes into tanks of water to draw attention to the brand. market would be a sweet victory for the company. Just a couple of decades after France had introduced bottled water to the United States, America would be returning the favor under the banner of the quintessential American brand. For the UK, c.o.ke spared no expense, pouring 7 million ($13 million) into advertising, trumpeting the slogan "The more you live, the more you need Dasani." For weeks, billboards around London declared, "Prepare to get wet," and just before the launch, high-divers plummeted ninety feet with flaming capes into tanks of water to draw attention to the brand.
No amount of theatrics, however, could prepare c.o.ke for what happened next. Just weeks after the launch, a British newspaper broke the story that c.o.ke's "pure" water was actually bottled in the southeast London suburb of Sidcup, which got its water from the River Thames. It was the equivalent of discovering that bottled water served in New York came from the Hudson. Immediately, c.o.ke came under fire from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the British version of the FDA, for the improper use of the word "pure."
Of course, Dasani wasn't exactly tap water. While c.o.ke might not let prying eyes into one of its water rooms, it touts a multistep scouring to turn pedestrian water into the final product. First, there is "ultrafiltration" to remove particles, followed by a carbon filter to remove odors, and a zap of ultraviolent light to kill bacteria. Most important, it pa.s.ses through a reverse-osmosis filter-a technique, c.o.ke told the skeptical British public, "perfected by NASA to purify fluids on s.p.a.cecraft" to remove 90 percent of anything still remaining. Only then does c.o.ke add back in its mineral mix, as the company has oxymoronically explained, to "enhance the pure taste." Finally, the water is given a dose of ozone to get rid of hard-to-kill parasites such as giardia and cryptosporidium. The result, c.o.ke claimed, was "as pure as water gets."
Despite such a.s.surances, the launch was a disaster. Soon, Dasani was being handed out for free in train stations and supermarkets in a desperate attempt to win customers. But the death blow was what happened next: Two weeks after the Sidcup jokes started, consumers stopped laughing when c.o.ke tersely announced it was voluntarily recalling half a million bottles of Dasani. The water, it explained, had been contaminated with levels of the carcinogen bromate at 22 parts per billion, twice the amount allowed by the FSA (or FDA).
In the ultimate irony, then, c.o.ke's water was not only no more pure than London tap, but also more dangerous to drink. Quickly, Thames Water declared its its water safe. Soon it became apparent the contamination hadn't come from the pipes, but rather from a by-product of ozonation, one of the very methods c.o.ke boasted of to "purify" its water. In a statement, c.o.ke all but blamed the British government, saying that it was legally required to add calcium chloride into the water in the UK. The high level of bromide in calcium chloride, it continued, led to the formation of bromate when exposed to ozone. water safe. Soon it became apparent the contamination hadn't come from the pipes, but rather from a by-product of ozonation, one of the very methods c.o.ke boasted of to "purify" its water. In a statement, c.o.ke all but blamed the British government, saying that it was legally required to add calcium chloride into the water in the UK. The high level of bromide in calcium chloride, it continued, led to the formation of bromate when exposed to ozone.
That explanation might have held more water if the tendency to create bromate through ozonation wasn't already well known in the industry. Just two years before, the FDA had warned manufacturers to use care in ozonation and test finished products for the presence of the chemical. An industry trade publication at the time went so far as to provide a formula for how much bromate can be formed given the amount of bromide in the source water. As a result of the warnings, Nestle stopped using ozonation for Perrier in June 2001, even as c.o.ke and Pepsi continued the process.
Whether through carelessness or arrogance, c.o.ke had turned a public relations hiccup into a disaster, as Britons now vocalized their anger at the American company. "Should I Really Despise Coca-Cola?" read a typical headline, and there were plays on c.o.ke's own branding, such as "Things Get Worse with c.o.ke" and "Dasani: It's a Real Disaster." In the face of such criticism, c.o.ke declared an end to its European conquest, swallowing a cost of more than $45 million and giving up dreams of converting the French.
For the Europeans, it was the perfect opportunity to stick it in America's eye during a time when the continent was chafing under George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and anti-American sentiment was at an all-time high. Any c.o.ke exec tempted to write off the fiasco as the cranky proclivities of another continent, however, was due for a rude awakening back on American sh.o.r.es.
It's a bl.u.s.tery spring day in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, where sets of four blue Dixie cups are arranged on a folding table in the middle of a city square. Three of the cups contain bottled water from the country's most popular brands-Dasani, Aquafina, and Nestle's Poland Spring. The fourth cup is full of tap water from a cafe up the street. One by one, pa.s.sersby stop by to sample them and guess which is which. If you think it'd be easy to tell the difference between the bottled water and the tap, you'd be wrong. The success rate of folks is only slightly better than random. Typical is Joe Marsden, a Cambridge resident, who stares in sullen disbelief at the table after identifying tap water as Dasani. "I thought I would have at least gotten Dasani or Aquafina right because I drink them the most," he says. "I couldn't tell the difference at all." in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, where sets of four blue Dixie cups are arranged on a folding table in the middle of a city square. Three of the cups contain bottled water from the country's most popular brands-Dasani, Aquafina, and Nestle's Poland Spring. The fourth cup is full of tap water from a cafe up the street. One by one, pa.s.sersby stop by to sample them and guess which is which. If you think it'd be easy to tell the difference between the bottled water and the tap, you'd be wrong. The success rate of folks is only slightly better than random. Typical is Joe Marsden, a Cambridge resident, who stares in sullen disbelief at the table after identifying tap water as Dasani. "I thought I would have at least gotten Dasani or Aquafina right because I drink them the most," he says. "I couldn't tell the difference at all."
Dubbed the "Tap Water Challenge," the update of the Pepsi Challenge is run nationally by young activists belonging to the group Corporate Accountability International (CAI), which has made bottled water the latest front in what it sees as the excesses of corporate power. Like anti-soda lawyer d.i.c.k Daynard, CAI cut its teeth in the fight against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, when it waged a boycott against Kraft, parent company of Philip Morris. However, the group dates back to two decades before, when it was originally founded as the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT) to attack Nestle for its promotion of baby formula over breast milk overseas. After a bitterly fought campaign, Nestle eventually agreed to stop pushing its formula in 1984. Now, twenty years later, Nestle was profiting off another product that the activists thought should be distributed for free, as one of the four largest bottled water producers along with European giant Danone (parent company of Evian), PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola.
If it seems a stretch to brand soft drinks as the next tobacco, then bottled water seems an even more unlikely villain. Here's a product with no harmful tar or sugar, no addictive nicotine or caffeine. Yet CAI was affronted by the way in which the bottled water corporations were taking over local water supplies, often paying next to nothing for the privilege. In Nestle's case, the company was tapping underground aquifers around the United States, as citizens from Maine to California and Michigan to Texas complained about dried-up streams and dropping water levels around their plants. But at least Nestle could legitimately call its "spring water" a unique beverage. c.o.ke and Pepsi were bottling munic.i.p.al tap water, pa.s.sing ostensibly clean water through additional purification processes, and then selling it for a huge markup. Meanwhile, c.o.ke's huge advertising campaign touting Dasani's "purity" further undermined public confidence in tap water, they argued, leading to more bottled water sales and less investment in public infrastructure.
By the time CAI began sounding the alarm in 2004, consumers were spending some $9 billion annually on bottled water in the United States, consuming an average of twenty-three gallons of the stuff per person (those numbers have since risen to $11 billion and twenty-nine gallons). Each year, sales increased by almost 10 percent-reminiscent of Goizueta-era c.o.ke before the backlash over obesity began. In fact, as soft drinks started to decline in sales for the first time, c.o.ke increasingly promoted water as a healthy alternative, spending tens of millions of dollars to rebrand itself as a "hydration" company, and replacing c.o.ke signs with Dasani signs on the sides of vending machines. All of those marketing messages sunk in; a Gallup poll at the time found three in four Americans drank bottled water, and one in five drank only only bottled water. bottled water.
Despite its popularity, however, a growing body of evidence has shown bottled water to be no purer or safer than tap-and in some ways, potentially less less safe. That's because tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which imposes strict limits on contaminants and mandates daily testing and mandatory notification of problems. Bottled water, on the other hand, is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which by its own admission has set a "low priority" for regulating bottled water plants. Its standards are slightly lower on some contaminants, and it requires only weekly testing and voluntary recalls in the case of problems. safe. That's because tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which imposes strict limits on contaminants and mandates daily testing and mandatory notification of problems. Bottled water, on the other hand, is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which by its own admission has set a "low priority" for regulating bottled water plants. Its standards are slightly lower on some contaminants, and it requires only weekly testing and voluntary recalls in the case of problems.
And sure enough, the benzene scare over Perrier and the bromate controversy in Britain are just the beginning of the problems with bottled water quality over the years. A cla.s.sic study by the Natural Resources Defense Council of more than one thousand bottles of water in 1999 found that while most samples were safe, nearly a quarter tested above state standards for bacterial or chemical contamination (only 4 percent violated weaker federal standards). More recent studies have continued to find problems: In 2000, the American Medical a.s.sociation found some bottled water had bacterial counts twice the level of tap. A 2002 study by the University of Tuskegee of brands including Dasani, Aquafina, and Poland Spring found mercury, a.r.s.enic, and other chemicals above the EPA limits. A 2004 study by the FDA found low levels of perchlorate, a derivative of rocket fuel, in samples of spring water. As recently as 2008, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) found thirty-eight different pollutants in bottled water, ranging from bacteria to fertilizer and Tylenol, and concluded that consumers "can't trust that bottled water is pure or cleaner than tap water." (The study did not reveal the types of water it tested, saying only that they were "popular" brands.) That spotty safety record of bottled water doesn't let tap off the hook. The same a.n.a.lysts at EWG found that tap water from forty-two states met federal standards for contaminants but still included a range of toxic goodies, including gasoline additives and endocrine disruptors, for which the government had not set limits. In early 2008, the a.s.sociated Press reported traces of pharmaceutical drugs and hormones in the water in twenty-four American cities, affecting 41 million people. True, the amounts were virtually microscopic-present in parts per billion or parts per trillion-but doctors cautioned even those small amounts can have effects with repeated exposure. "After learning about all the things that can go wrong with tap water, I don't know what to think, or drink," sighs Elizabeth Royte, author of Bottlemania Bottlemania, a 2008 expose of the bottled water industry.
Despite all of the conflicting studies and alarms, the truth is that in the United States, both tap water and bottled water are generally safe to drink. And that might be the most d.a.m.ning charge of all against bottled water, given the price difference between the two. On average, convenience-sized bottled water costs just over $2 per gallon, while tap water costs just one-or two-tenths of a cent per gallon-a difference of one thousand times. With statistics like these, it was only a matter of time, perhaps, before people began thinking what comedians from Dennis Miller to Janeane Garofalo have been telling us for years-that "Evian is just 'naive' spelled backward."
Even as some newspaper stories questioning bottled water began to appear, however, the activists from CAI realized that none of the charges against bottled water would mean anything if they couldn't address the issue of taste. The idea of the Tap Water Challenge grew out of a late-night brainstorming session in CAI's Boston office in 2005, as the activists groped for a way to take the issue head-on. Not knowing what they'd find, they pitted the tap water in their office against bottles of Dasani and other brands; they were genuinely surprised to find that they couldn't tell the difference.
In the early spring of 2006, CAI rolled out Tap Water Challenges in seven cities-including Boston, Austin, Minneapolis, and San Francisco-adding others every few weeks over the next six months. Everywhere they went, people were amazed to find they couldn't distinguish between bottled and tap. Just as decades of advertising had convinced people they liked c.o.ke Cla.s.sic more than Pepsi or New c.o.ke, it seemed the millions spent on branding bottled water had made people think it tasted fresher and purer than tap. And just like the Pepsi Challenge a generation earlier, the ready-made conflict of pitting two beverages against each other was irresistible to the media. Newspapers began running on-the-scene reports of die-hard Dasani or Aquafina drinkers chagrined to find they'd mistaken their favorites for Newark or Philadelphia tap water.
CAI's Gigi Kellett, the national director of the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, admits the group first chose cities they already knew had good water-including Boston and San Francisco, which pipe in water from reservoirs so pristine they don't have to filter it. Soon, however, they realized they could hold them almost anywhere-even places such as South Florida that had a reputation for poor-tasting tap water. Oftentimes, the most skeptical taste-testers hadn't tasted the water in years. When they held challenges in Miami-which sources its water from an underground aquifer before submitting it to a high-quality filtration and treatment system-they got the same results as anywhere else.
As awareness of the Tap Water Challenges spread, however, the activists found the issue that resonated most with consumers had less to do with the quality of the water, much less privatization and control of water resources. Instead, they were most concerned with the bottles themselves. In 2006, former Vice President Al Gore had just released the doc.u.mentary An Inconvenient Truth An Inconvenient Truth, warning of the apocalyptic consequences of climate change and spurring consumers to measure their personal carbon footprints and carry canvas bags to the grocery store instead of wasting excess plastic. Likewise, there seemed something especially galling about wasting all of that plastic for a product that could just as easily be had from the tap. According to a 2009 report by the nonprofit Pacific Inst.i.tute, it takes the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic for all bottled water consumed in the United States in a year-enough to power 1 million cars. Add in the cost of production and transport, and that number increases to between 34 and 58 million barrels. (And worldwide production takes three times that.) Then there is disposal. Nationwide, the average container recycling rate was 33 percent in 2009, down from a high of more than 50 percent in 1992. Much of that decrease was due to the introduction of bottled water, which has doubled over the past decade to nearly 33 billion liters sold by 2008-nearly all of it in single-serving PET containers. Since bottled water containers have been recycled at notoriously low rates of less than 20 percent, the Washington, D.C.-based Container Recycling Inst.i.tute concludes that these containers have brought the overall recycling rate down. Add it all up, CRI says, and that translates to some 3 billion pounds of plastic bottles in the waste stream each year. Bottled water companies, of course, dispute the notion that bottled water containers are more to blame than other products for plastic waste. According to Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water a.s.sociation (IBWA), PET bottles represent only a third of 1 percent (.0033) of all trash. "If you can get your head around that, it's very clear that these efforts to target bottled water are misguided at best and totally ineffective in dealing with the problem at worst," he says. In some ways, he has a point-what makes bottled water any worse than soda, juice, or beer, which also use plenty of water in their production and are nearly as likely to end up in the trash? And in an increasingly on-the-go society, isn't it better for people to grab a bottle of water at the convenience store rather than a sugary soda?
That's long been the line of the bottled water folks, who argue that bottled water isn't competing against tap water so much as against other beverage choices, like soda. "Every day in newspapers and on TV you see stories about increasing obesity and diabetes," says Doss. "These actions against bottled water will have no good consequences if they discourage people from drinking a healthy beverage."
Without trashing soda, c.o.ke makes virtually the same argument. "Consumers are making a choice of bottled water versus another beverage," said c.o.ke's director of water stewardship, Greg Koch, in 2007. "Do I want a Coca-Cola? Do I want a coffee? Or is it happy hour? There's a time and a place for bottled water, as there is for milk and juice and beer." In a sense, it's the same argument that the company used for years to support drinking soda-consumer choice-updated for a new beverage.
As for recycling, Doss says the IBWA has lent support to curbside recycling initiatives-adding that two-thirds of bottled water is consumed at home, at work, or in offices, places where curbside recycling is readily available. Those also happen to be places where tap water is readily available, however, contradicting the argument that bottled water is necessary as an alternative beverage "on the go." When that discrepancy is pointed out, Doss, too, falls back on the mantra of "choice": "It is a choice, it's always a choice, they should have that choice, bottled water consumers are choosing to drink both and there is nothing wrong with that."
While that argument might float to some degree, it's hard to say c.o.ke and its fellow companies aren't competing against tap water when they are churning out advertis.e.m.e.nts full of mountain streams and rivers emphasizing how pure and tasty their water is-not how easy it is to grab at the 7-Eleven on the way to the gym. As bottled water has caught on, it has taken over in more and more places that tap water used to be available-and even replaced tap water entirely in many homes and offices. Just as pouring-rights contracts led to a proliferation of soft drinks in the 1990s, now water fountains have disappeared at schools, airports, and munic.i.p.al buildings, which all have contracts with bottled water producers instead.
The most dramatic consequence of that shift occurred at the inauguration of the University of Central Florida's new stadium on a sweltering day in 2007. The stadium had been built without any water fountains, a fact discovered by fans when concession stands ran out of the Dasani they'd been selling at $3 a bottle. Some sixty people ended up suffering from heat exhaustion as a result of dehydration; eighteen were sent to the hospital. Initially, school officials apologized by handing out a free bottle of Dasani to each ticket holder at the next game; after widespread fan outrage, however, they eventually agreed to install fifty water fountains, an amenity that had somehow previously escaped their minds.
Incidents such as these, coupled with the Tap Water Challenges, turned awareness of bottled water's environmental consequences into a full-fledged backlash-driven by the unlikely champions of those most responsible for tap water's production: U.S. mayors. Sick of being criticized about the water quality of their cities, mayors began canceling city contracts with bottled water companies and even began reinstalling water fountains in their city halls. Taking the issue further, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom took a resolution to the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in June 2007 that would commit all member cities to phase out bottled water at munic.i.p.al buildings and events. Joining him to cosponsor the resolution were two mayors from more conservative political territory: Salt Lake City's Rocky Anderson and Minneapolis's R.T. Rybak. When the American Beverage a.s.sociation, led by c.o.ke, showed up to lobby aggressively against its adoption, arguing that it was only the first step in banning bottled water citywide-a direct affront to capitalism-their efforts backfired. While the mayors stopped short of pa.s.sing a resolution encouraging members to ban bottled water, they did approve a resolution to study the issue and its effects on munic.i.p.al trash systems. More surprisingly, the study actually occurred, and a year later, resulted in pa.s.sage of the earlier, tougher call for a ban. as these, coupled with the Tap Water Challenges, turned awareness of bottled water's environmental consequences into a full-fledged backlash-driven by the unlikely champions of those most responsible for tap water's production: U.S. mayors. Sick of being criticized about the water quality of their cities, mayors began canceling city contracts with bottled water companies and even began reinstalling water fountains in their city halls. Taking the issue further, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom took a resolution to the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in June 2007 that would commit all member cities to phase out bottled water at munic.i.p.al buildings and events. Joining him to cosponsor the resolution were two mayors from more conservative political territory: Salt Lake City's Rocky Anderson and Minneapolis's R.T. Rybak. When the American Beverage a.s.sociation, led by c.o.ke, showed up to lobby aggressively against its adoption, arguing that it was only the first step in banning bottled water citywide-a direct affront to capitalism-their efforts backfired. While the mayors stopped short of pa.s.sing a resolution encouraging members to ban bottled water, they did approve a resolution to study the issue and its effects on munic.i.p.al trash systems. More surprisingly, the study actually occurred, and a year later, resulted in pa.s.sage of the earlier, tougher call for a ban.
By then, more than sixty cities has already joined the backlash, with Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Austin, and Providence all either canceling bottled water contracts or instructing city departments not to buy bottled water. At the same time, restaurants moved to take bottled water off their menus, starting with chef Alice Waters, the G.o.dmother of "California cuisine," who nixed bottled water from her Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse in March 2007. Soon after, Food Network favorite Mario Batali followed suit at his empire of restaurants, including Manhattan's swish Del Posto.
If the summer of 2003 was the season that childhood obesity exploded into public view, the summer of 2007 was the season the United States woke up to bottled water. Even The Economist The Economist has called the success of bottled water "one of capitalism's greatest mysteries" in an online editorial in July 2007, conjuring the patent medicine era by calling it the new "snake oil." Kellett remembers the exact day when she realized CAI had won-July 15, 2007. While organizing a day to call in to Pepsi's corporate headquarters, she was taken aback by a strange playback message saying executives were meeting to determine how to respond to activist concerns-a response CAI hadn't heard in decades of organizing. has called the success of bottled water "one of capitalism's greatest mysteries" in an online editorial in July 2007, conjuring the patent medicine era by calling it the new "snake oil." Kellett remembers the exact day when she realized CAI had won-July 15, 2007. While organizing a day to call in to Pepsi's corporate headquarters, she was taken aback by a strange playback message saying executives were meeting to determine how to respond to activist concerns-a response CAI hadn't heard in decades of organizing.
Finally at the end of the day, Pepsi declared that, from then on, it would label Aquafina with the words "public water source," identifying its origins from munic.i.p.al sources. If it had hoped through the action to stave off further criticism, it failed. Within two days, the activists were doing round-the-clock interviews with every major television and news organization to talk about how not only Pepsi, but also c.o.ke, sourced its water from the tap.
Within just a few years, bottled water had gone from trendy to gauche. In the fall of 2007, CAI began circulating a "Think Outside the Bottle" pledge, asking people to drink public water over bottled water whenever possible. Within just a few weeks, it signed on several thousand people, celebrities among them, including actor Martin Sheen. In late 2007, actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Lucy Liu supported a project to charge $1 for tap water in New York City restaurants to raise money for UNICEF's clean water efforts abroad. They raised $100,000. By that fall, Nestle had joined Pepsi in revealing the source of its water on its labels-and went even further by including detailed water quality information on its website for all brands by 2009.
Alone among the Big Three bottled water producers, c.o.ke held out. "The FDA's definition of purified water does not require [revealing] the source," argued c.o.ke spokesman Ray Crockett. "We believe consumers know what they're buying." Unfortunately, his words turned out to be too true. After a decade of near double digit growth, bottled water suddenly plummeted in 2008-with sales volume dropping 2 percent over the previous year. Dasani fared even worse, with sales dropping 4 percent, despite slashing its prices by 40 percent in the previous three years.
Part of that was due to the major recession that hit that fall; as consumers tightened their belts, they cut down on luxuries such as a $1.50 bottle of water at the convenience store to fill their own bottles at the tap. But they might never have made the choice to do that had they not already been a.s.sured they'd be safe doing so. As the recession hit, CAI moved from city hall to the state house, encouraging governors to cut state bottled water contracts to save scarce state resources. By then, Coca-Cola had already planned its response, and true to form, it was more in the vein of changing its image than changing its reality. Over the last hundred-some years, c.o.ke had gone from a health tonic to an all-American drink to a symbol of worldwide harmony. Now it would work to undergo its biggest branding change in decades to become an environmental steward.
Lined up outside the bottling plant in Needham are eight tractor trailers, their polished sides gleaming red in the sun. Another, pulled around in front of several rows of foldable chairs, is hung with a big sign on the side: "Do You Know This Hybrid Electric Truck Helps Reduce Emissions in Our City?" The press conference today has been called to announce the addition of fifteen of these new hybrid trucks to the Ma.s.sachusetts fleet, part of Coca-Cola Enterprises' "Commitment 2020," a new initiative to become an environmentally sustainable company within the next decade. outside the bottling plant in Needham are eight tractor trailers, their polished sides gleaming red in the sun. Another, pulled around in front of several rows of foldable chairs, is hung with a big sign on the side: "Do You Know This Hybrid Electric Truck Helps Reduce Emissions in Our City?" The press conference today has been called to announce the addition of fifteen of these new hybrid trucks to the Ma.s.sachusetts fleet, part of Coca-Cola Enterprises' "Commitment 2020," a new initiative to become an environmentally sustainable company within the next decade.
"We've set pretty aggressive goals," says Fred Roselli, CCE's press officer, standing in the parking lot before the press conference. Wearing big black sungla.s.ses and a black suit despite the eighty-degree heat, he looks like a Mormon Bible salesman, and has the enthusiasm to match. "We're reducing absolute numbers of carbon 15 percent from our 2007 levels," he patters. "We've installed energy efficient lighting, we're putting in water-saving technology, we've started a whole new company to do recycling." The tractor trailers, he says, are part of the largest fleet of hybrid trucks in North America-some 237 by the end of 2009, each one spewing 30 percent fewer emissions into the air.
All of these environmental initiatives are "part of CRS," says North American president for Coca-Cola Enterprises Steve Cahillane, as he takes the podium. On cue, employees circulate through the crowd, handing out pins in the shape of a green c.o.ke bottle reading "Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability." "CRS is all about making a difference wherever our business touches the world," Cahillane continues. "We not only work here, we also live here, so we are doing everything we can to create sustainable communities."
The concept of socially responsible business practices isn't new-though usually it's called CSR, for "corporate social responsibility" (perhaps inverting the letters is a way for c.o.ke to claim ownership of the concept). In fact, c.o.ke's environmental initiatives follow a script that dates back to the 1950s. It's then that corporations, having survived the Progressive Era and FDR's New Deal, began to proactively affirm the power of businesses to benefit society. "Business managers can more effectively contribute to the solution of many of the complex social problems of our time," wrote Frank Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey-which would become Exxon-in 1951. "There is no higher duty of professional management." The concept emerged as a sort of n.o.blesse oblige of corporations, who responded by spreading a set amount of their profits to social causes in their communities.
Of course, there were limits to what a corporation could do-since legally its obligations were to increase profit for its shareholders, not spread its wealth to solve the world's problems. Henry Ford had found that out in 1916, when his Ford Motor Company was sued for using profits to give discounts to customers instead of dividends to shareholders. The judge in the case sided against him, ruling that "a business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of its stockholders." It's that principle that has caused Joel Bakan to argue that corporations are essentially "pathological" ent.i.ties-maximizing profit at the expense of any other good-whether workers' rights, environmental improvements, or even its own customers' pocketbooks. "The corporation's legally defined mandate is to pursue, relentlessly and without exception, its own self-interest regardless of the often harmful consequences it might cause to others," he writes.
That's not to say that corporations can't do good, however, so long as their efforts align with their profit motive. The second wave of corporate social responsibility began in the 1970s, when, faced with challenges from consumer advocates like Ralph Nader (and CSPI's Michael Jacobson), corporations realized that investing in social causes could serve as a kind of insurance against criticism. It was in this era that c.o.ke's Paul Austin pursued his "halo effect" with hydroponic shrimp farms, desalinization plants, and soybean beverages that he argued could help earn goodwill in the developing world at the same time they helped make c.o.ke's vision of global harmony a reality.
Surprisingly, the practice of CSR was further entrenched by the Reagan administration, which encouraged voluntary corporate giving as a way to fill the void left from cutbacks in social programs. Even while Goizueta sloughed off the do-gooding subsidiaries acquired by his predecessor Austin, c.o.ke established the Coca-Cola Foundation in 1984 in an effort to "enhance our ability to meet the growing needs of the communities we serve, and to provide the company with an established, forward-looking program of charitable giving." Historically, of course, c.o.ke had long given to charity, dating back to Asa Candler's first gifts to Emory University. But while Candler resented the obligation to give, and Robert Woodruff earned the nickname "Mr. Anonymous" for the lengths he went to avoid credit for his charitable giving in Atlanta, Goizueta ensured that the new Coca-Cola Foundation would go out of its way to gain publicity for its actions. "It's not that we plan to be boastful now, but we plan to step out in our name and give at a level that we can be proud of," said its first president at the time.
While the Coca-Cola Foundation was ostensibly independent from the corporation itself, it focused its efforts in areas closely aligned with the goals of the company, concentrating particularly in the area of c.o.ke's most important market-children. Neatly getting around c.o.ke's policies about advertising to children, c.o.ke inst.i.tuted a $50 million giving program to elementary and middle schools throughout the 1990s, and followed it up with a $60 million gift to Boys & Girls Clubs that came with an exclusive beverage agreement with the organization in 1997.
In fact, Goizueta was one of the pioneers of "strategic philanthropy," the newest trend in CSR that emerged in the 1990s. Instead of spreading money around broadly to a number of causes in an effort to be seen as a good corporate citizen, corporations increasingly began tying their nonprofit foundations to the image they were trying to achieve for their brand-from Exxon investing heavily in conservation issues after the Valdez oil spill in 1994, to AT&T pouring money into kids' art and education programs as it expanded into cable and the Internet. Some companies even competed to sign exclusive contracts for particular causes, as yogurt maker Dreyer's discovered when it asked to support the largest breast cancer foundation, only to discover that Yoplait had already signed on.
The "social branding" was working. One survey found that, all things being equal, 84 percent of people would switch brands to a company that supported a good cause. While some financial purists such as Milton Friedman declared CSR "evil" for perverting the free market, most financial a.n.a.lysts saw it for what it was: "a cool appraisal of various costs," in the words of one Financial Times Financial Times columnist, since "companies less exposed to social, environmental, and ethical risks are more highly valued by the market." columnist, since "companies less exposed to social, environmental, and ethical risks are more highly valued by the market."
No one could argue, after all, that CSR was fundamentally changing the character of business-in an era when the United States saw some of the worst examples of corporate wrongdoing in history in WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, and other companies that cooked their books to shovel record profits into the pockets of executives and investors at the expense of their own customers and employees. As the real threat of global warming emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century, companies rushed to tout their environmental consciousness. The most notorious example is British Petroleum, which rebranded itself BP and vowed to move "Beyond Petroleum" to alternative energy. After years of positive publicity, however, alternative fuels have never amounted to more than 5 percent of company spending; in 2009, a new CEO announced he'd be scaling back on even that commitment in an effort to improve profitability. The following year, of course, BP was responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history when one of its deep-sea oil rigs exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, discharging thousands of barrels of oil a day. After the incident, it was revealed, BP had lobbied against a simple safety measure that could have prevented the accident.
Even when the environmental branding isn't such obvious "greenwashing," it obscures one simple fact: Most of the initiatives companies have taken to increase efficiency and drive down their carbon footprints are also just good business. That's certainly the case with c.o.ke, whose efforts to reduce emissions, water use, and electricity, after all, also mean reducing costs. Asked to name anything the company is doing that is actually costing it money, Roselli hesitates. "Well, the hybrid trucks cost more," he says. "It will take three years to recoup the money we spend on those." Asked if any of the projects will cost the company money in the long run in the long run, he responds, "Well, the bottom line is the bottom line," he says. "I think big corporations want to be able to do that, but we're trying to figure out which projects to prioritize."
The danger of CSR initiatives is that they have become such a branding tool that they make it seem like the opposite is true-that companies are somehow investing in causes out of a motive of self-sacrifice, rather than partnering partnering with causes for mutual benefit. And as branding has become the primary reason for CSR, the appearance of doing something can overshadow the benefits of doing it. That's certainly the case with c.o.ke's biggest environmental advertising initiative, touting its recycling efforts at the same time that the bottled water backlash has been drawing attention to all of that wasted plastic in Dasani bottles. with causes for mutual benefit. And as branding has become the primary reason for CSR, the appearance of doing something can overshadow the benefits of doing it. That's certainly the case with c.o.ke's biggest environmental advertising initiative, touting its recycling efforts at the same time that the bottled water backlash has been drawing attention to all of that wasted plastic in Dasani bottles.
Just as the criticism against bottled water was going mainstream, in late 2007, c.o.ke announced a new partnership between the Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Enterprises to create Coca-Cola Recycling, with the stated goal of eventually recycling 100 percent of its PET plastic bottles. The cornerstone of the effort was a new $50 million facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, that it announced would be the world's largest "bottle-to-bottle" recycling plant. By 2010, the company boasted, the plant would have a capacity of 100 million pounds per year, making it the most ambitious effort ever by a company to recover and recycle all of its own packaging materials. against bottled water was going mainstream, in late 2007, c.o.ke announced a new partnership between the Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Enterprises to create Coca-Cola Recycling, with the stated goal of eventually recycling 100 percent of its PET plastic bottles. The cornerstone of the effort was a new $50 million facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, that it announced would be the world's largest "bottle-to-bottle" recycling plant. By 2010, the company boasted, the plant would have a capacity of 100 million pounds per year, making it the most ambitious effort ever by a company to recover and recycle all of its own packaging materials.
To celebrate its effort, the company created an "eco-fashion" line of clothing made from recycled plastic; and, of course, it launched a new ad campaign, premiering during American Idol American Idol in January 2009. Called "Give It Back," it featured people tossing c.o.ke bottles into recycling bins, only to see them pop out anew from slots of c.o.ke machines. To drive home the message, c.o.ke began working with parks, zoos, and sports stadiums to prominently display red recycling bins in the shape of c.o.ke's hourgla.s.s bottle. in January 2009. Called "Give It Back," it featured people tossing c.o.ke bottles into recycling bins, only to see them pop out anew from slots of c.o.ke machines. To drive home the message, c.o.ke began working wi