Ethical issues concerning coke

1. Ethical issues concerning coke.

2. Kala Dera - Thirsting from Coca-Cola
• Coca-Cola started its bottling operations in Kala Dera in 2000, and within a year, the
community started to notice a rapid decline in groundwater levels.
• For farmers, loss of groundwater translated directly into loss of income.
• For women, it meant having to walk an additional 5 to 6 kilometres just to fetch water
to meet the basic daily needs of the family.
• For many children in Kala Dera, it meant leaving schools to provide a much needed
helping hand doing household chores since the women had additional burdens.
• The community in Kala Dera organized itself to challenge the Coca-Cola company for
the worsening water conditions - through extraction and pollution - and demanded
the closure of the Coca-Cola bottling plant.
• The company, in usual fashion, denied any wrongdoing, blaming "outsiders" for the
increasing local community opposition.

3. Stop Using Groundwater in Kala Dera
• The assessment made four recommendations with regard to the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Kala Dera,
making it clear that Coca-Cola could no longer utilize the overexploited groundwater resource in Kala
Dera:
Transport water from the nearest aquifer that may not be stressed
• Store water from low-stress seasons
• Relocate the plant to a water-surplus area
• Shut down this facility

4. Coca-Cola's Response - Unethical and Dishonest
• Continued Misery in the Face of Certainty
Kala Dera lies in an overexploited groundwater area and access to water has been difficult.
Summers are particularly intense in the area, and summers are when water shortages are most
acute.
Ironically, summer months are also when Coca-Cola reaches its peak production, and it is in the
summer months that the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Kala Dera extracts the most water, making
already existing water shortages even worse.
• At the very least, the Coca-Cola company could have stopped extraction of water this summer,
knowing very well the conclusions of the assessment.
• With facts in hand, the Coca-Cola company has chosen to continue its operations, knowingly
contributing to the misery of thousands of people.
• On the one hand, Coca-Cola talks a good talk about being a good corporate citizen.
• Yet, it continues to deplete groundwater causing undue hardships to the community even after it
has been told to stop doing so, that too by a study funded by the company itself.

5. • Criminal Negligence or Straight Incompetence.
The Coca-Cola company has refused to share the environmental impact assessment it conducted for Kala
Dera (or any other plants in India), citing "legal and strategic confidentiality" reasons.
However, the Central Ground Water Board of India had already assessed the groundwater in and around
Kala Dera to be "overexploited" in 1998.
The Coca-Cola company started operations in 2000 - two years after the Indian government agency had
already found it to be "overexploited".
Did the Coca-Cola company know that the groundwater was overexploited and still built and operated its
plant?
If the company knew that the Kala Dera groundwater area was overexploited, then starting a water
intensive plant borders on criminal negligence, if not criminal negligence itself.
And how could the company, which describes itself as a "hydration" company, not know that the Central
Ground Water Board of India had already assessed the groundwater as overexploited?

6. • Misrepresenting Facts
In reaching out to the media and the public regarding the scathing TERI assessment, the Coca-Cola
company has misrepresented the facts on several occasions.
• Coca-Cola Does Not Meet its Own Standards
In the same letter, the company states that their plants "on an overall basis are meeting our own
more stringent internal standards."
One of the shocking findings of the assessment was that of the six plants surveyed, in not one did
the plant meet the Coca-Cola company standards for waste management, known as the TCCC
standards! What is the point of having Coca-Cola company standards if not a single plant meets
them?
• Coca-Cola Not in Compliance with Government Regulations
In the same letter, the company states that "its bottlers are in compliance with the standards of
relevant India government and regulatory agencies."
Again, the assessment found that the treated effluent discharge at none of the six plants surveyed
met all the standards of the relevant Indian government and regulatory agencies. The assessment
states that the treated effluent discharge at the plants "mostly met the effluent discharge
requirements".
Mostly, at least from the last definition we checked, does not mean all.

7. Thank you
Presented by:
Rajat arora(usc14025)
Sourav dhar Choudhury(usc14032)
Sudeepta sabat(usc14038)
Pratikshya nayak(usc14043)
Vaibhav Aggarwal(usc140)