Dasani's Uncomfortable Dance

Coca Cola fielded some tough questions on bottled water from the audience and the other members of the panel Friday morning at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference (because what we eat and drink has an environmental impact and journalists should cover it, after all).

At a panel on the green efforts of corporations, Coca Cola Vice President for Environment and Water Jeff Seabright touted Coke’s great record and how they’ve reduced water use down to 2.6 liters of water used to every 1 liter of product produced (yes, you read that right 2.6L water used:1L soda or bottled water produced). “It takes a lot of water to wash bottles and clean machinery,” he said.

Food & Water Watch didn’t even have to respond to that because it turned out that Coke’s loudest critic this morning was sitting right next to Jeff. Environmental journalist and author Bill McKibben repeatedly lambasted Coke for the wasteful practice of bottling water. When challenged, Coke pointed out how they can provide water in an emergency. Bill didn’t think that was a particularly strong argument. He wasn’t impressed with the ‘we produce what the consumer wants’ argument either and challenged Coke to eliminate all their bottled water advertising in order to evaluate the true demand for the product. Nice.

We’ll be sending Bill our next copy of Aqua Bits, our quarterly newsletter on the bottled water industry. You should sign up to get it too (choose waterforall list).