While many companies are striving to become carbon neutral, Coca-Cola is seeking to become water neutral, meaning all the water used to produce its line of beverages will either be returned directly to the earth or reclaimed through recycling and conservation. This is a lofty goal, and Coca-Cola hasn’t actually set a timeframe. However, the company is aware that water is a precious resource which it needs to make beverages and which it needs for the company’s survival. For Coca-Cola, increasing population numbers and increasing demands on water make their goal more critical than ever.
For each liter of beverage bottled, Coca-Cola uses approximately two and a half liters of water. This amounts to nearly 100 billion gallons of water used annually, equivalent to about 20 percent of total U.S. water consumption. The water used includes water that goes directly into its beverages as well as water that is used for cleaning, lubricating machines, and growing sugar and corn (for corn syrup).
Recently, Coca-Cola has been an environmental target. In 2002, a Southern Indian village accused a Coca-Cola bottling facility of polluting and depleting groundwater, leading not only to a PR mess, but also forcing the bottler to shut down and leave the village. The last thing Coca-Cola wants is poor press, especially as corporate environmental responsibility is become more critical than ever. Also, imagine if Coca-Cola is banned from all or parts of burgeoning countries such as India or China. Being shut off from huge populations and areas for growth would be disastrous for the company.
Coca-Cola has taken some steps as it recognizes the potential PR mess that may be caused by a lack of significant proactive corporate responsibility. In some facilities, waste water is captured, treated, and used for street cleaning and car washing. Coca-Cola is also taking simple steps such as fixing leaking pipes and using less water intensive lubricants for its machines. Coca-Cola can probably take a chapter out of Wal-Mart’s book and create low-water consumption facilities with devices such as waterless urinals. Coca-Cola realizes the importance of water in its supply chain and the need to preserve as much of this natural resource as possible. If real water shortages come about, forcing bottling facilities to shut down will be the least of Coca-Cola’s worries.
Just out of curiosity, are any of you getting the new iphone when it comes out on July 11? I am, but this is not why I’m writing the post. Instead, I want to tell you about something cool Apple is doing…with the box.
Apparently, Apple’s iphone will offer packaging made of potato starch, and supplied by PaperFoam. According to PaperFoam’s website, their packaging is carbon friendly, has low CO2 emissions, and 100% recyclable.
The company that I work for offers boxed software, so I often get pulled into meetings to talk about packaging. It’s been a struggle for us to find an eco-friendly solution (it costs a lot), so I’m totally digging the fact that there are more and more eco-friendly alternatives out there.
We have written in the past about how to reduce the amount of junk mail you get. See these posts by JB on the topic: Post 1, Post 2.
Our friend, Dr. B.S. (hey, that’s his name!) discovered another way, and he’s written a post about it:
While there are many websites devoted to combating the overwhelming amount of junk mail people receive, I have been turned off by the cost and questionable ulterior financial motives that these sites proffer. However, I found one free site that I signed up for while surfing on the web this morning.
www.catalogchoice.org is a site where you can opt out of catalogs that you no longer wish to receive. The process is simple. You need to first create an account and click on the link in a confirmation email. You can then search for different catalogs that you wish to unsubscribe to. There is a pretty good selection of participating merchants that respond to this service. I signed up to opt out of future Crate & Barrel and Office Depot mailings. Surprisingly, REI was not available yet. For some of the companies, you need to enter a code number that appears on your address label. I will just wait until I receive those catalogs in the mail before I will process my unsubscription.
The service claims to take ten weeks before your catalogs will stop being sent to you. Hopefully I have a cleaner mailbox to look forward to in a few months!
Thanks Dr. B.S.!
Did you know that the ‘gentle exfoliating microbeads’ that are in many facial products are made of plastic? That’s right, the same plastics that take hundreds if not thousands of years to degrade, and every time you wash your face with them, they go right down the drain, and eventually into the ocean. And while there haven’t been any studies about what happens to them when they reach the ocean, it surely cannot be good.As the blog Low Impact notes:
There haven’t been that many studies on what the long term effect is of these plastic granules floating around the ocean. It appears likely that the particles do end up inside of marine creatures. Zooplankton in particular, tiny marine creatures that filter particles out of the water for food, can end up “swallowing†these little beads. It’s not clear whether the plastic ends up harming these little critters, or if it can start to build up in higher levels as it goes up the food chain.One study has found that these plastic beads can act as a sponge for such poisons as DDT and PCBs. So wherever these bits of plastic end up, they bring some unwelcome baggage with them!Â
If you’d like to avoid making this problem worse, look for “polyethylene” in the ingredients. Olay Smooth Skin Exfoliating Scrub with Gentle Microbeads, for instance, has plastic microbeads, as you can tell from it’s ingredient list:
Water, Cetyl Betaine, PPG 15 Stearyl Ether, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Glycerine, Oxidized Polyethylene, Stearyl Alcohol, Salicylic Acid, Distearyldimonium Chloride, Cetyl Alcohol, Steareth 21, Behenyl Alcohol, PPG 30, Steareth 2, Fragrance, Disodium EDTA, Ferric Ammonium FerrocyanideÂ
OK, how freaking cute is this dog? Paul showed me this picture a couple of years ago and since then, I’ve been dreaming about getting one of my own, even though I’m not really a small dog person. I’ve always thought of myself as owning a larger dog.
Anyway, I don’t have a dog, or any pets for that matter – my lifestyle (long hours, lack of a yard, small house, etc.) preclude me from owning any, but I was curious to know, how do you dog-owners take care of your dog waste? Reader Betsy asked a very good question:
I have always gotten plastic bags at the grocery store to use as doggy pick-up on my walks. I am trying to go more green in my life and this plastic bag usage is my one last “obstacleâ€. Does anyone have any green ideas for picking up after my dog that’s both environmentally friendly and reasonably priced?
I google’d this and found that there is certainly no dearth of bio-degradable bags which promise eco-friendliness, yada yada yada. But man, they do seem expensive! Does anyone have any advice or solutions they can share with Betsy?
