Coca-Cola under fire over bottling plant operations during local crisis: 'The companies take too much'
Coca-Cola once again finds itself in hot water with the environmental community after leaving an entire city in drought.
What's happening?
Mexico's San Cristóbal has been left without running water for days. But just a few miles away, Coca-Cola's local bottling facility is operating around the clock, extracting over 1.2 million liters of water per day.
While families are forced to store water in buckets and barrels, Coca-Cola's three high-powered pumps continue to siphon water to fuel the production of soft drinks and bottled water.
"How can they take millions of litres of water and leave none for us?" said DK Dens, a local graffiti artist known for murals showing giant Coke bottles sucking the planet dry through a straw.
"The companies take too much water," said Ismail Jiménez, a local resident. "We need it."
Despite protests, officials have largely remained silent, making the public grow increasingly frustrated.
Why is this important?
Water should be a fundamental human right. Yet in San Cristóbal, it's being turned into a commodity and resold to the very people who can no longer access it for free.
This issue is another example of large corporations leveraging favorable contracts and political clout to extract local resources at the expense of locals. Residents are not only losing access to drinking water but also facing health issues, loss of food security, and reduced quality of life.
This Coca-Cola controversy is not an isolated incident. The company has been named one of the world's top plastic polluters multiple years in a row now, and its business model has repeatedly come under fire for exploiting vulnerable ecosystems.
What's being done about this?
Some advocacy groups in Mexico are pressuring local and national authorities to reassess water concessions and restore community access. Protests and independent journalism have also raised global awareness about the situation in San Cristóbal.
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Coca-Cola has made some public moves toward environmental responsibility, such as eliminating plastic rings from certain packaging and investing in limited water replenishment programs.
Consumers can help by supporting legislation that safeguards public access to water, reducing purchases of bottled beverages, and demanding greater transparency from multinational corporations about their water usage
