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A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

truth-out.org

11–20 of 162 posts

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#11

The article is not very clear. It looks like most of the problem is caused by population grow, without good infrastructure. Not by Coca-Cola. Also, this is misleading: > FEMSA reports that it uses 56.9 billion liters of water a year in its operations across Latin America. In Mexico, the company holds 40 water permits. The 56.9 billon liters seams to be a lot and it is a lot, but it's the total in Latin America. But t…

It says:

"The Chiapas branch of Conagua confirmed to Truthout that the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total."

(Conagua is the National Water Comission)

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, the cruise visitors to Juneau do spend a fair bit of money there.

If you have ever been, you would see 99.9% of cruise passengers stay down the end of town designed for them, where the ships dock. Guess who owns the vast majority of shops there!...... Yup! Holland-America! (Friends tried to open a jewellery shop in Skagway, AK and didn't want to pay the kick-backs Holland-America demanded.... so Holland-America just warns people on the ships not to shop there .. "We heard someone g…

I spent on a tour, a ride, and on beer, easily a hundred in all. There are many ways to spend.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#13
post #2

This exact situation in Venezuela made me think Hugo Chávez was not always completely nuts with some of his ideas. He was sick of multinationals like Coke buying water for a couple of cents a mega-liter. Coke would then add some sugar and color to it before selling it back to the people for dollars per liter. The expensive purification of that water was paid for by tax revenue. Chávez decided this was not right, and…

Cities along the Inside Passage are miniscule and would basically not exist if not for cruise ship revenue, so that makes sense.

That said, they probably could have called Holland America's bluff. But I'm sure they had good cause for not wanting to take that risk.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#14
post #7

While Coca-Cola deserves a great deal of blame for this (obviously), surely the bigger part of the blame should go to the local government for allowing them to do this? Isn't the people, and therefore the government, sovereign? Or are there some laws/constitutional issues that would prevent the government from restricting Coca-Cola in taking all the water? By the way, this is why corporate-written and corrupt treatie…

The issue is that Coca-Cola et al, in practice, have enough power that they can cause problems for Governments which don't allow them to do what they want. Concentration of money is nearly precisely equivalent to concentration of power. And then you have international trade agreements and Governments willing to back this status quo up.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#16
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, the cruise visitors to Juneau do spend a fair bit of money there.

If you have ever been, you would see 99.9% of cruise passengers stay down the end of town designed for them, where the ships dock. Guess who owns the vast majority of shops there!...... Yup! Holland-America! (Friends tried to open a jewellery shop in Skagway, AK and didn't want to pay the kick-backs Holland-America demanded.... so Holland-America just warns people on the ships not to shop there .. "We heard someone g…

Not to play down the injustice, but it seems like you'd be able to prove a defamy case for the cost of one cruise. Alternately, you could prove a whole class of defamy cases if there are other businesses affected.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#17
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, the cruise visitors to Juneau do spend a fair bit of money there.

If you have ever been, you would see 99.9% of cruise passengers stay down the end of town designed for them, where the ships dock. Guess who owns the vast majority of shops there!...... Yup! Holland-America! (Friends tried to open a jewellery shop in Skagway, AK and didn't want to pay the kick-backs Holland-America demanded.... so Holland-America just warns people on the ships not to shop there .. "We heard someone g…

There is just no way that the ship will skip Juneau no matter what the city does. It is too important of a port.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#18
post #2

This exact situation in Venezuela made me think Hugo Chávez was not always completely nuts with some of his ideas. He was sick of multinationals like Coke buying water for a couple of cents a mega-liter. Coke would then add some sugar and color to it before selling it back to the people for dollars per liter. The expensive purification of that water was paid for by tax revenue. Chávez decided this was not right, and…

He identified a real problem (that part is not hard as no country is short of easily identifiable problems), the problem was he using it as base/narrative to gain more personal power and influence, instead of solving the problem for the country's benefit.

The problem with third-world countries is not that the political elite fails to identify problems, it is that they use this to gain more power through populism or they use it to gain more money through corruption.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#19

So where I'm from we have a similar problem yet no end in site. After last years summer we had one of the worst droughts this region has ever had, but then it went into winter. It didn't rain much this winter and now we're back in summer... With water restrictions starting the summer as bad as they were when we ended it. To the point of this though. One of the worlds largest breweries is situated in my city. My count…

Can you name the brewery / city?
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