Green Options

In their ongoing efforts to achieve a more environmentally friendly image, the Coca-Cola Co. announced earlier this month that they will be launching new biobased plastic bottles for their Dasani water line later this year and vitaminwater next year. They’re calling their new packaging the “PlantBottleTM.”

If you live in Washington, D.C., keep your eyes open this April. PepsiCo, the makers of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Aquafina, have begun field-testing 30 green vending machines. The machines feature a redesigned Pepsi logo and are prominently marked as green technology.

Talking with Corey Szopinski, Principal and Founder of Core Industries.

Your firm has worked on some pretty cool projects like Live Earth and Pepsi, 1% for the Planet and the Volkswagen Carbon Neutral Project. Tell us what your clients come to your company for and what makes Core Industries different from other interactive strategy, design and development firms.

We’re the next evolution of a boutique interactive marketing firm. We are one of the few very high end development shops that has a clear mission of focusing on the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit. Clients come to us because they know that we get invested in their projects, their company, and their people, because we care about what we’re doing… we not out to make a quick buck. In fact, our overall mission is to help foster the emerging green economy. Our way of doing that is by using graphic design, computer science and marketing strategy to help our clients be more “sustainable”. And for us sustainability has a dual meaning: it means being responsible for our environment, but it also means making sure the business is sustainable. In other words, we help our clients thrive, not just survive.

Next time you pop open a coke or drink a VitaminWater, sip on this.  The 2009 World Environment Center’s (WEC) Gold Medal for International Corporate Achievement in Sustainable Development will be awarded to the Coca-Cola Company.  The award recognizes the beverage giant for achievements in water stewardship, packaging, climate change, and energy management.

Watching out for Water

Coca-Cola’s Signature Contribution is in the area of water stewardship.  The company’s goal is to restore to the environment all water that is used to produce of its products.  It aims to achieve this through reducing the amount of water in the manufacturing process, recycling water back into natural systems, and locally relevant conservation projects.  With a new report predicting global water shortages by 2020, increased attention to water and natural systems seems increasingly imperative.  (Hopefully Coca-Cola includes the water needed to grow and process the sugar in its calculations - approximately 200 L of water per can in Europe.)

I don’t drink sodas primarily because they contain high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  Apparently, I am not alone in my concern over HFCS, as cane sugar sweetened Pepsi and Coke from Mexico are desirable in the United States.  I’m not sure I would risk Montezuma’s revenge from Mexican water to drink a sugar cane sweetened soda from south of the border; however, the long term negative effects of HFCS may be far worse.  Unfortunately for natural soda lovers, Mexican Pepsi and Coke are illegal in the US.

PepsiCo has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Clayton Distributing Company in Georgia for violating trademark laws, committing fraud and engaging in deceptive, unfair trade practices by selling sugar cane sweetened, Mexican Pepsi in the United States.

Odd-ball green news it may be but Coke has been discovered to be an effective spermicide, which may be good for the environment; and for that very elaborate effort of discovery, a woman’s sexuality expert has just been awarded an alternative Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Weird or wacky, you might say, but rumor actually has it that Snopes.com might soon bring down this link that debunked the long suspected (was it an urban legend until the Ig Nobel Prize?) but now confirmed sperm killing effects of the famous Coca Cola soft drink.

Or, more evidence for the skeptics. Thanks, as always, to Brad and Peter. Check out more of their work at The Green House.

The German intellectual, Georg Lichtenberg, once said that “to do just the opposite is also a form of imitation,” but reversing Saint Nicholas’ image is certainly not the most sincere way to flatter it.

What’s the truth about Santa Claus? Who is this large, jovial fellow with flying reindeer and hordes of merry elves? If the truth about Saint Nicholas can lay the commercial icon to rest, maybe it can also restore the true meaning of Christmas as a time of peace on Earth, love and goodwill toward all.

Santa as a commercial icon undercuts the ideology of benevolence and humble giving. See this video on the chain of consumption for an idea of who gets left out when Santa goes corporate. A truer idea of the real Saint Nicholas and his current image around the world might reconnect us with the greater feelings of compassion and caring that should symbolize this (and every) season.