Coca-Cola, the world's most famous and powerful brand, is under attack from anti-poverty campaigners, including the War on Want group in Britain.
Plenty of action in India. According to a report in The Independent, the drinks giant is being blamed for siphoning away scarce underground water supplies, resulting in severe water shortages and crop failures for local subsistence farmers.
The report reckons it takes nearly three litres of water to make a litre of Coke and campaigners claim that water supply dries up when Coke bottling plants are set up.
That comes with claims from campaigners that Coca-Cola usually converts two-thirds of the freshwater it extracts into wastewater but in India, 75% of the freshwater it extracts from the ground is turned into wastewater. The India Resource Centre condemned the company's sponsorship of the World Water Forum in Mexico last week, claiming they were using it as a public relations stunt.
No doubt, they would say the same about the report of Coca-Cola chairman and chief executive officer E. Neville Isdell informing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the company was joining the United Nations Global Compact.
Whichever way you look at it, the world's most powerful brand has its work cut out convincing critics that its brand of corporate social responsibility is the real thing.
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