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How Coke and Pepsi Can Score the Ultimate Touchdown at Next Year's Super Bowl
By endorsing container deposits, the big brands can reduce their plastic footprint, their carbon emissions, and celebrate a transformative shift on the plastics crisis
Feb 03, 2019
LA Rams vs. New England Patriots took center stage at the Super Bowl Sunday, but the pre-match build-up has been dominated by Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi.
Pepsi has been vying for advertising dominance in Atlanta, Coca-Cola's home turf, while Coke's pre-game commercial embraces diversity, a message that feels political in today's climate. This follows a growing trend of major brands taking progressive stances on social issues from toxic masculinity, solidarity with Colin Kapaernick and Brexit. But is the moral high ground yours to take when it's not reflected in your business model?
PR campaigns aside, both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are major contributors to the plastic crisis. Last summer my organization, The Story of Stuff Project, helped coordinate hundreds of 'brand audits' in collaboration with the #breakfreefromplastic movement. Adding a twist to the traditional beach clean up, volunteers identified the type and brands associated with 187,000 pieces of plastic pollution collected across the world. The companies with the biggest plastic footprint? Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle.
Although much of today's packaging is inherently problematic, the second most commonly found item in our audit was plastic bottles (PET). It's one of the few types of plastic that can be widely recycled so long as it's collected, and herein lies the challenge of a product designed to be consumed 'on the go.' Enter an ingenious solution: container deposits. By adding a refundable deposit to the price of a bottle you incentivize its return for recycling.
It's a proven measure that reduces the chances of a bottle of Coke or Pepsi from getting landfilled or polluting the environment after use. It's virtually eliminated polluted bottles in Michigan and Oregon, two of the US's ten states with 'bottle bills'. Their systems recover over 90% of their beverage bottles, as opposed to 20% - 30% of bottles collected on average in curbside recycling across the US.
Rather than embrace this solution, Coca-Cola and Pepsi embrace industry lobbying groups that undermine such legislation.
But rather than embrace this solution, Coca-Cola and Pepsi embrace industry lobbying groups that undermine such legislation. Last December, a group of legislators backed by the Michigan Soft Drink Association attempted to rush through legislation in lame-duck season to end Michigan's world-class deposit system. These skirmishes occur periodically to weaken existing systems as well as obstruct new container deposit laws addressing the plastic blighting their communities.
But the growing stature of the plastic crisis is forcing the idea into consideration. Coca-Cola Europe recently completed a 180-degree turn and is now participating in shaping an effective container deposit system in the UK. While at last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola stated that the "value" of their packaging was the key to higher recycling rates.
These companies are presumably concerned that container deposits don't revolve around convenience: a concern that embodies the "disposable" mindset that led us to the current plastic crisis. Polling across locations where container deposits exist, however, show high levels of support for the system. I believe that's because, in an age where plastic is entering our air, water, and food, contributing to part of the solution can feel rewarding.
Globally, one million plastic bottles are sold every minute. By endorsing container deposits, the big brands can reduce their plastic footprint, their carbon emissions, and celebrate a transformative shift on the plastics crisis. Those sound like good ingredients for next year's winning Super Bowl commercial.
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How Top Food Companies Fail to Protect Environmental Activists in Supply Chains
The Deadly Consequences of Defending Indigenous Lands.
Sep 18, 2017
A recent investigation by the anti-poverty advocacy organization Oxfam reveals how the world's top ten food and beverage companies are failing to protect environmental and human rights defenders caught in the companies' supply chains.
The Oxfam report, Pathways to Deforestation-Free Food, demonstrates how Associated British Foods, Danone, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg, Mars, Mondelez, PepsiCo, Nestle and Unilever have committed to tackling deforestation caused by their companies, but crucially lack policies to protect local activists and environmentalists within their supply networks from violence, threats, and attacks.
"A glaring policy gap across all the companies analyzed," the Oxfam report found, "is that none have policies to protect human rights defenders, nor require their suppliers to put in place policies of zero threats, intimidation or attacks against human rights defenders and local communities."
Industrial farming of food ingredients such as soy and palm oil, for example, have led to massive deforestation and displacement of rural communities in Indonesia, Brazil, Colombia, and elsewhere throughout the globe. Activists standing up against such industries in defense of forests, rivers, land, and the livelihoods of local communities have been threatened and murdered at an increased rate in recent years.
Four environmental activists were murdered each week in 2016 for defending their communities and environment from the impacts of agribusiness, mining, and logging industries, according to a report from the human rights organization Global Witness.
In Colombia, activists standing up against the impacts of El Cerrejon, Latin America's largest open-pit mine, have faced regular threats and violence.
Jakeline Romero has organized against the water shortages and displacement caused by this mine, which is owned by Glencore, BHP Billiton, and Anglo-American.
"They threaten you so you will shut up," Romero told Global Witness. "I can't shut up. I can't stay silent faced with all that is happening to my people. We are fighting for our lands, for our water, for our lives."
The world's leading food and beverage companies are not doing enough to stem the violence against environmental activists in their own supply chains, the new Oxfam report found.
"In many countries where agribusiness companies are investing, the rights of community activists are under attack because of their work to defend the rights of their communities--the right to forests and natural resources, to their land and water, their livelihood and their way of life," Oxfam stated.
"From violent crackdowns on protests and criminalization of speech, to arbitrary arrests and assaults or, in some cases, murder of human rights defenders, as well as restrictions on activities of civil society organizations, such attacks seek to delegitimize the voice and interests of communities," Oxfam explained.
Across the world, from Indonesia to Honduras, environmental defenders are facing down multinational corporations and the devastating impacts of their industries on local communities, rivers, forests, and indigenous ways of life.
Honduran activist and social justice leader Berta Caceres was murdered in March, 2016 for her environmental activism and leadership of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).
In an interview on the legacy of her mother's struggle, Berta Caceres' daughter Berta Zuniga Caceres, explained the vision of COPINH and how it challenges the economic model guiding multinational corporations and their political allies.
"It's a very rich vision and one that exists among many indigenous peoples," Caceres explained. "It has to do with building a logic that's completely opposed to the hegemonic way of thinking that we're always taught. The vision and proposals are defiant, totally different than the academic, patriarchal, racist, positivist vision of the world. They include relations between people that are much more communitarian and collective, and that also have a strong relationship to the global commons and to nature, defying the dominant anthropocentric vision. They relate to spirituality and the relationships we have with all living beings - a holistic vision of life."
"Indigenous people find themselves battling extractivism, companies, mining, because that's the battleground where these different ways of knowing, of feeling, of cosmovision play out," she said. "This is the wealth of indigenous peoples. But it also represents a threat for the economic model that's based on profits and money, and that's developed through repression and exclusion."
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The Story Behind the Meme Mocking Pepsi's Attempts to Brand Rebellion
Apr 11, 2017
On April 5, I woke up to find out I was a meme gone viral.
"Yo Kendall, im gonna need you to come through with a pepsi, these cops are wildin" pic.twitter.com/dOpKnTq8LU
-- Kim Jong Tun (@ignant_) April 5, 2017
The hilarious meme by @ignant_ was in reference to the shameful ad that Pepsi produced--and quickly took down--depicting model Kendall Jenner diffusing tensions between protestors and cops by handing one officer a refreshing can of Pepsi. When the officer cracks open the can, the protestors are overjoyed and the officer gives an approving grin. Peace on earth prevails because of commercialism and sugar water.
Hundreds of thousands of people have liked and shared the hilarious meme that mocks the ignorance of the Pepsi ad that was made from an image taken of me at the 2015 Martin Luther King Day rally in Seattle.
But here's what folks who shared the meme might not know about that photo: The image is a still taken from a video that shows me on the phone, walking on the sidewalk, when Seattle police officer Sandra Delafuente, totally unprovoked, opens up a can of pepper spray in my face. If only Kendall had been there with a cold can of Pepsi!
Many people asked if the photo was real or photo shopped. It's real. Too real. I wasn't on the phone with Kendall, but I was on the phone with my mom giving her directions to come pick me up because it was my son's 2-year-old birthday party later that day. That's when a searing pain shot through my ear, nostrils and eyes, and spread across my face. My mom soon arrived and took me back to the house. I tried to be calm when I entered so as not to scare my children, but the sight of me with a rag over my swollen eyes upset the party. I spent much of the occasion at the bathtub, with my sister pouring milk on my eyes, ears, nose and face to quell the burning.
In the aftermath, I filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department--which is under a federal consent decree by the Department of Justice because of its demonstrated excessive use of force--and I helped organize rallies and press conferences with other victims of police brutality. This pressure helped Seattle's Office of Professional Accountability rule in my favor and recommend a one-day suspension without pay for officer Delafuente. Not much of a reprimand, but at least it was an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. However, Seattle's chief of police, Kathleen O'Toole, directly intervened to erase that punishment. Maybe I should have tried handing her a can of Pepsi before I asked for justice?
After more than a year of stressful litigation, I reached a $100,000 settlement. This was in no way justice. Justice would have been making the officer who assaulted me account for her crime. But I was determined to make sure some good came out of the pain and I decided to use settlement money to start the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award to honor Seattle youth in who pursue social justice and and organize against institutional racism. Nominations for this year's award are currently open. I gave the first three awards out last year to some incredible young activists:
- Ifrah Abshif, whose work founding the Transportation Justice Movement for Orca Cards--secured travel funding for all low-income Seattle Public School students who live more than a mile from their schools.
- Ahlaam Ibraahim founded the "Global Islamophobia Awareness Day" event at Seattle's Pike Place Market.
- Marci Owens has been a healthcare and Black lives matter activist and is transgender student who has become a strong advocate for the LGBTQ community
We need to support young changemakers like these because commercialism won't save us. Corporations like Pepsi will always be in the business of trying to brand rebellion and profit from protest. But while they shamefully try to get their conglomerates "in the black" off of the image of the Black lives matter movement, we will be building that movement and fighting for a world where the wealth is used for the common good.
But for now I'm just glad that one of the most painful moments of my life has been turned into stinging satire that makes me laugh out loud.
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