When a firm in China ends up on a list, it rarely is a good thing, a fact that Coke and Pepsi learned last week when put on Beijing’s top 12 water waster list.  see AFP article: Coca-Cola, Pepsi on Beijing’s worst polluter list: govt

It was an announcement that, given their consumption of water, did not really shock anyone, but it did provide fodder for a lot of blogs and twitters who were looking to capitalize on an issue that has begun to gain more of the spotlight.

Water

The Beijing plants of US soft drink giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been listed as among the top 12 factories causing major water pollution in China’s capital, the city government has announced.

The list issued by the Beijing Development and Reform Commission, the capital’s economic planning agency, was published along with the top 15 energy users in the capital, which included the Beijing Benz-DaimlerChrysler plant.

What made this report all the more interesting to me was that I have spoken to both firms before and had been told about their efforts for not only saving water, but also in how they manage the waste water. In the words of one executive they have actually been trying to find ways that the local areas can use the water, green spaces, but even though the water quality is HIGHER exiting the factories than entering the factories, they are still not allowed to reuse the water (see PepsiCo Opens Green Beverage Plant in China).

Thus, the waste.

Initially, both Coke and Pepsi reacted to the news with their own releases that both admitted their needs for water, and defended their use and waste standards as “meeting local requirements”, and 24 hours later Chinese officials stepped back a bit from the strength of the initial release:

Any enterprises that discharge pollutants to water, no matter whether they reached standards or not, are considered as polluting factories, said a spokesman with the EPU.

By the term “key water polluting factories”, it means the enterprises use a large amount of water and belong to chemical, medicine, electric, beverage, brewage and food manufacturing, the spokesman said.

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are comparatively large users of water and belong to the beverage industry, so they were listed, he said.

“The listed companies have reached the Chinese standards for pollutants emission,” he said. “But there is no best, but better, in environmental protection.”

Sadly, it is clear that the standards by which Pepsi and Coke were being measured were completely arbitrary, and based not on measurements of actual waste. A judgment that I feel shows a lack of judgment on the part of the judge.

The timing of this actually could not have been better for me as I just wrote a paper and presentation on the changing attitudes, roles, and medium of media in China as it pertains to sustainability/ social issues, and it provided an excellent case of how firms are exposed now. For firms like Pepsi who use massive amounts of water, Starbucks who toss billions of paper cups, or McDonald’s whose beef requirements result in greenhouse gases (MH4), there should be no surprise that the scrutiny over their foot prints will increase…. but if the process of highlighting the issues is itself flawed (i.e. the above announcement), then the integrity of the entire process will be questioned and it will only make it more difficult going forward.