Do you do Coke?
From an ethical point of view, should I buy Diet Coca Cola?
'There are lots of big companies out there who exploit their work force, have their fingers in some dodgy pies, and finance arms production etc. I want to know how ethical the Coca Cola company are, and whether I should stop giving them my money to spend on things I am opposed to...?'
Most of my answers so far indicate a lack of understanding about issues like Trade Justice, and ethical business practice, in general. And of course I've had a lot of 'Buy American!' tub-thumping. After the ' just to ease your liberal guilt over everything.' answer, I decided to pose the same question, newly-worded, on Yahoo Answers UK & Ireland:From an ethical point of view, should I buy Diet Coca Cola?
I already live as ethically as I can, buying Fair Trade as far as our shopping budget allows, reducing my consumption, etc., and I often wonder if my little Diet Coke habit in fact makes me a bit of a hypocrite?
There are lots of big companies out there who exploit their work force, have their fingers in some dodgy pies, and finance arms production etc. I want to know how ethical the Coca Cola company are, and whether I should stop giving them my money to spend on things I am opposed to...?
So far, I've had scant answers regarding the genuine question, and more opinions than anything else. Obviously, I wasn't intending to make my decision based on a few comments from unqualified strangers, but I thought one or two people might at least have been able to point me towards research/magazine articles/conspiracy theories. I guess it's a symptom of our age. What I think/feel/believe has superceded the actual, often absolute, truth.
Hell, I'll throw it out there, though. What do you think? (asking your opinion) And what do you know? (asking about The Coca-Cola company)
posted by The inimitable Mrs T. @ 12:21 pm
11 Comments:
At 8:30 pm ,
Alana said...
You may find an article that was in The Independant last year interesting: http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article1220259.ece
It's really difficult I think because many large international corporations engage in some fairly unethical practices but it would be difficult to avoid their products complete - if we think of all the products that companies such as CC and Nestle now make due to buying up smaller companies.
Also it's not all black and white, there are so many grey areas to it. Even a practice that looks fairly unethical could have a very damaging knock on effect should the practice be discontinued.
So for example companies that use child labour - in many cases these children are the sole providers for their families so if companies stopped employing them it could have a very damaging effect. It's sometimes better to look at the way that these companies may help these kids - so is the working environment safe and well maintained, do they allow the children to have time out to play and have classes in literacy and numeracy, do they provide help with the cost of health care should the child become ill - these are things that I believe some companies that have been called on their unethical use of child labour now provide.
Also a lot of the major corps support the local economy of the places they have workforces and seemingly unethical practices. If they pulled out of these places due to consumer pressure it could do more harm than good.
I think it's a really complex issue that can't just be looked at in terms of is CC ethical/does it engage in practices that I don't feel comfortable with ethically. I think the only way to answer your question about whether perhaps you could discontinue your consumption of Diet Coke would be to learn more about the places that CC is situated and what kind of treatment their workers received and what CC adds/detracts from each place - not information that is necessarily easy to come by.
I believe with CC there is also an ethical issue about obesity and marketing to children but I won't get started on that as I've blathered on for long enough!!
At 8:34 pm ,
Alana said...
Just realised that I haven't actually answered your question either - LOL! As a corporation i don't actually know a huge amount about CC.
At 2:36 pm ,
The inimitable Mrs T. said...
Maybe you didn't literally answer my question, but you're thinking along the same lines I am, and I'll definitly check out that article, thanks.
Just for the record, I don't presently buy any Nestle products and, as you say, you sometimes have to look closely at what you're buying to know for sure!
At 2:57 pm ,
Nikki Mayfield said...
From a health POV, if you stopped consuming Diet Coke I think you'd pretty soon be hospitalised for dehydration!
On a more serious note, I think you are right to be spending time thinking about the ethical and environmental impact of what you use and consume.
In the case of Coke, perhaps it travels less than some of our veggies to get to us (We could all benefit from being able to buy seasonal stuff direct from farmers)But as a company I am not sure how ethical they are, or if they have an adverse impact on the environment.
As a family, we are really putting our energy behind re-cycling and trying to be less wasteful - I was shocked to hear a report in the news last week that stated for every £1 we spend on food, we waste 10p worth - shocking!
Sorry - a little off track there...
At 5:30 pm ,
Alana said...
Nikki, I've been thinking more and more and the food miles/fair price for producers issue myself recently too.
I can no longer justifying buying many vegetables from supermarkets as the places they travel from is just craziness!! I occasionally top up my weekly box with additional bits from Tesco or Waitrose but I always check where something comes from and if it's outside of Europe I won't buy it - if it is something that is in season in the UK and is shipped from somewhere within Europe I won't buy that either.
I now buy my meat almost exclusively direct from a farm. It is more expensive but I have now made the decision that I would rather eat less meat and ensure it's ethically produced and a fair price has been paid for it.
What really gets me at the moment is the difficulty I have in recycling. There is no kerbside recycling for the block I live in and because we have very little storage space it's quite difficult to keep things for a trip to the banks. Stuff like plastic is almost impossible to recycle as even the banks here don't have bins for it as most people have it collected as part of the kerbside service.
For me it's pretty easy to avoid Nestle as I don't eat any processed foods and don't drink tea or coffee. I would be hard pushed to give up CC though as like you I practically survive on it - LOL! I was thinking back to an article I was reading before about CC and remembered that it operates by a system of franchises so it has historically had very little control of the working practices of it's franchisees but it said this is changing and they are now, beacuse of a lot of pressure (mainly from student organisations) taking more control - think the article was in "Ethical Corporation" - you maybe able to view it on their website but not sure if you have to subscribe.
At 11:31 am ,
The inimitable Mrs T. said...
The thing about Nestle is that you can buy a bottle of WATER and you've put money in their pocket without realising it, you have to look closer than you think!
Food miles is a major issue at the moment, and I'm worried that it will have a detrimental effect on the Fair Trade movement. The truth is, if people limited how much flying they did both for business and holidays, it would have a far greater impact on the environment. Let's remember that it's less 'developed' areas of the world that suffer the greatest effects of global warming, since the greenhouse effect and consequent droughts, tsunamis etc. are a direct result of Western consumption.
At 1:38 pm ,
Alana said...
I think the only bottled waters that don't have Nestle in the name that Nestle produce are:
* Perrier
* San Pellegrino
* Vittel
Is that correct to your knowledge?
I don't buy much water though (what with my diet coke habit!) so it's not too diffcult steering clear of these.
With regard to the food miles/fairtrade issue I think you would have found an article in December's issue of The Econimist interesting as it went into some of the problems around this - I don't think it's available online and I've given my copy away now but might be worth a read if you can get hold of one.
There are some things - like bananas - that we will always have to import so I support the fairtrade of these but I have to say that, as a small island it worries me how much we now rely on the import of our food - should we ever need to become self-sufficent again we wouldn't have the necessary infrastructure to support this with more and more of our farms going out of business due to the supply of much cheaper goods (not just from the third world but the rest of Europe, etc).
The less developed areas can be the places that suffer from the consequences of climate change but when you think of places like Australia who also have a massive hole in the ozone layer over them it also affects other areas too.
I think it's a case of balance - so for me part of that is buying products with least amount of packaging, that have travelled the shortest distance and have used the least chemicals and pesticides, etc in production.
One area that I'm unwilling to cut down on is my travel abroad - selfish? maybe - but it's the reason for working so hard the rest of the time so that I can enjoy this. I will however do my best to compromise by offsetting my journeys - for anyone interested - http://www.climatecare.org/ or http://www.carbonneutral.com/
Hmm - guess I have a lot to say on this subject, huh? ;-) I must admit that I've only just begun in my learning as far as these issues and how they fit together goes but it's an area that really interests me.
At 7:02 pm ,
The inimitable Mrs T. said...
On the subject of water, you can buy ONE water - all of their profits go into providing pumps to provide fresh, clean water in various places in Africa.
And I think you've hit the nail on the head, really, when you say it's about balance, because you're clearly living life with you're eyes wide open on this one, and making as many changes as you can.
I just think that you can't extricate the issues of justice and of the environment. Obviously the ozone is damaged - and the consequences are felt - all over the planet, but what I was trying to get at was that less-developed countries bear very little of the blame for it, yet are the least able to defend themselves against the damaged that we have caused.
This is why I'm so concerned about people shying away from Fairly-traded goods, because if consumers stop buying them in this country, then people all around the world will be forced into modern slavery: prostitution, child-trafficking, poverty and exploitation, or even simply to death.
Most fairly-traded products are goods and foodstuffs that we have to import anyway e.g. tea, coffee, chocolate.
And how often do we think about how far our wine has travelled? New World wines are incredibly popular, if we aren't buying French or German, we should be buying Fair Trade.
At 7:49 pm ,
Alana said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
At 7:50 pm ,
Alana said...
Good tip on the water - thanks - will definitely be looking out for it. Great blog post - has really got me thinking. :-)
At 7:51 pm ,
Alana said...
Oooops - double posted somehow!
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