Coke Accused of 'Greenwashing' its Image in India

LOS ANGELES, Jun 6 (OneWorld) - The Coca-Cola company has been charged with illegally seizing lands communally owned by small farmers and indiscriminately dumping sludge and other industrial hazardous waste onto the surrounding community. This comes as the multinational beverage giant announced a new effort Tuesday to protect rivers on four continents.

The San Francisco-based India Resource Center, an environmental health non-profit, further charged Coca-Cola with releasing untreated wastewater into surrounding agricultural fields and a canal that feeds into the Ganges River in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The charges are based on the results of a fact-finding mission led by the group to a Coca-Cola bottling plant in the region.

"Access to potable water is a fundamental human right," said Amit Srivastava of the India Resource Center.

"The Coca-Cola company must acknowledge that it is part of the problem of water unsustainability in India and elsewhere," he added.

This is not the first time environmental groups have criticized Coke's operations in India.

In 2003, in response to a growing campaign against Coca-Cola, the Central Pollution Control Board of India surveyed eight Coca-Cola bottling plants in the country and tested the sludge at all these facilities. The Board found all the sludge at all the Coca-Cola bottling plants it surveyed contained high levels of toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and chromium. At the time, it ordered the Coca-Cola company to treat its sludge as industrial hazardous waste.

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