Against Coca- Cola

I used to love it - straight of the can or as a ice cream float! The taste is so well defined that even today after many year of NOT drinking it, my neurons in my brain still bring out the sensation in my taste buds. I avoid it like plague now! I also used to drink Dasani and Aquafina (coke and Pepsi's claim to the bottled water world) and am sometimes flabbergasted to see people not only buy it but also waste half the water in the bottle down the garbage chute! Wake up people! Here is a true story for you or is it today's history .......

When I recently heard about the request for closure of a coca cola bottling plant (one of 50 in India), I was genuinely happy. But I also heard that the giant is now asking for more opinions from other sources (yet again) to stay on power and deplete the water resources. Read what Ajay of Plachimada Samara Aikyadartya Samithi, an environmental group campaigning against Coca-Cola has to say on an Indian Newspaper.

India is not water rich in any manner - for that matter the earth is not - where ever we are, we owe it to our future that we conserve water! We have only 3% of the water of our earth as freshwater - come on people! And why is fresh water important? The figures here are from the http://ga.water.usgs.gov/ website -



If you can get these figure wrapped around your head, you can get this story too .. so read on.... It is all over - Latin America and South Asia are just some of the bottling (or should I say killing?) fields! I was recently in Costa Rica and wanted a local soft drink and I was just saddened that that drink too was made by Coca Cola - it really hurts. MSU, UofI, York University, have all agreed to ban coke and hopefully more will follow and not let another giant take its place. It makes me just mad and I really don't think that this website called killercoke.org is an extreme!

Why, back in July 2003, BBC had a Face the Facts programme on it that showed how the company has soaked up excessive water and that water has turned foul and impossible to drink, cook with or bathe in. The results were confirmed by a poison expert , Professor John Henry of the St. Mary's hospital in London. He said that cadmium and lead was being leached into the fields and ground water through the sludge that the plant produced. This was back in 2003 people!! Coca Cola the giant has still plundered on.

Will you let your child walk barefoot in these fields, cook using water from shallow ponds and wells, and drink water of the tap as all common people in these areas do? Will you? The people there still do. It is not so hard to teach my son about why I do not give him coke as a beverage - but I am not sure how far I can keep up that. I do need to probably just wait for more momentum and an understanding from him and his peers, and his peer's families too!

thanks for reading ... off to drink more water and soothe my anxiety :)
ciao