Thousands of people in India living around Coca-Cola’s bottling plants are challenging the company for creating water shortages and pollution.
The Coca-Cola company has located many of its bottling plants in drought prone areas in India.
Coca-Cola extracts millions of liters of water from the groundwater resource – the same source of water that the community relies upon to meet its basic water needs. 
It was inevitable that once Coca-Cola started its bottling operation in these areas, the groundwater levels would drop and the water shortages would get worse.
Coca-Cola has also indiscriminately dumped its toxic waste into the surrounding areas – which have contaminated the remaining groundwater and the soil.
Tens of thousands of people who live around Coca-Cola’s bottling plants – primarily farmers – have been dramatically impacted because of Coca-Cola’s extraction and pollution of water resources.
Women now have to walk kilometers further everyday to seek potable water for household use because the wells and water pumps in the area have dried up or are no longer safe for drinking. Farmers have lost their livelihoods because there is not enough water for successful crop production. Children have been taken out of schools so that they can help the family get water or earn a livelihood.
Access to water is a fundamental human right, and Coca-Cola is denying thousands of people in India their basic human right.
Thousands of people in India, led primarily by women, farmers, indigenous peoples and landless laborers have organized to challenge Coca-Cola’s abuses and demand the closure of the bottling plants.
Two Coca-Cola bottling plants – in Plachimada and Ballia – have been shut down already and a proposed Coca-Cola bottling plant – in Sivaganga – was stopped from being built – all because of community led campaigns.
Two other communities – Kala Dera and Mehdiganj – have strong campaigns demanding the closure of the Coca-Cola bottling plants because of water shortages and pollution.
Coca-Cola bottling plants do not belong in areas where the community does not have adequate access to water. The water rights of the community, including farmers, are primary, and Coca-Cola is violating these rights.
As the campaigns have progressed, they have become stronger in numbers as well as factual evidence – from government sources, independent groups as well as a study paid for by Coca-Cola – that validate what the communities have been saying all along.
The campaigns in India also enjoy tremendous international support and solidarity.
Coca-Cola should never have located its bottling plants in drought prone, water challenged areas. The company claims that it conducted environmental impact assessments prior to locating these plants, yet it refuses to share them, citing reasons of “commercial confidentiality.”
It’s own study, conducted by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), concluded that Coca-Cola has located its plants in India from strictly a “business continuity” perspective without due consideration to the impacts on the community.
Coca-Cola’s response to the community campaigns is characterized by arrogance and impunity. In spite of the overwhelming evidence against it, the company refuses to acknowledge that it is part of the problem.
The TERI study has recommended the closure of the bottling plant in Kala Dera, concluding that the company’s operations are unsustainable, but Coca-Cola has ignored the recommendation.
Coca-Cola has responded by hiring expensive advertising firms to manufacture a green and sustainable image of itself – greenwash.
No amount of greenwash is going to improve the lives and livelihoods of the thousands of farmers, women and children who are being affected negatively by Coca-Cola’s operations.
It is going to take a coordinated international campaign, led by communities in India, to force Coca-Cola to meet the demands of the communities in India.
- Coca-Cola must shut down its bottling plants in Kala Dera and Mehdiganj
- Coca-Cola must never reopen its plants in Plachimada and Balia
- Coca-Cola must compensate affected community members who have lost their livelihoods
- Coca-Cola must be held criminally liable for the damages it has caused
- Coca-Cola must pay for the remediation of the depleted water resource and pollution it has caused
- Coca-Cola must set up a fund to train and relocate the workers who will be laid off as a result of the shut down