Coke

Soft drink production uses an enormous amount of water, and leaves behind tons of waste. Coca-Cola knows this. Its new “going-green” features stylish green cans and highlights the company’s water conservation efforts. Coca Cola has partnered with WWF to preserve seven of the world’s major rivers. It is also helping conservation projects in water-stressed areas throughout the world. Oddly, Coca Cola fails to mention is how these sensitive water sources became stressed in the first place. It takes about 2.5 liters of water to produce just one liter of product at Coke’s bottling plants. Coca-Cola sells 1.5 billion beverages a day in over 200 countries. In 2006, Coca-Cola and its bottlers used 80 billion gallons (290 billion liters) of water to produce beverages — equivalent to one-fifth of the daily water usage of the U.S. Approximately 40% of that went into producing their popular drinks like Coke, Sprite and Fanta, while the other 60% was consumed by the firm’s supply chain and the production of ingredients, including the water-intensive process of growing sugar and corn for corn syrup. Not to mention the amounts of plastic waste the company’s plastic bottles produce.