Classic Coke
how late-stage capitalism steals our water
I love supporting regional news, so The Sprawl (Calgary) is one of my Patreon investments. This week, they released an important podcast that really caught my attention. It’s about water resiliency in my city.
I’m on The City of Calgary’s climate advisory committee, which is a group of experts that provide information to city council. We are currently forming a subcommittee, reflecting resilience, and one of our areas of focus is basic needs. So: food, water, shelter, and air. Things that humans need but climate change and ecological disruption can absolutely affect. In fact, all four areas have been at risk in this province.
But what absolutely blew my mind, and really shouldn’t have in retrospect, was learning that the Coca-Cola company has had a role in our water supply.
In fact, one of the Dasani stations where they bottle our city water water is on Barlow Trail. You can hear more about it at the 26 minute mark of the podcast. Keep listening to hear how they failed to curb their water packaging even when we had a water-main burst and we were under deep restrictions for one month.
Restrictions that meant we had to decrease our household use by at least 50%. Note, this did not affect energy or agricultural use of water. Just personal residential and small business. So we couldn’t do things like shower as frequently, flush our toilets, water anything outside. It was hugely impactful.
But not for Coca-Cola. This harelds a much larger problem around how late-stage capitalism will be prioritized. Where corporations profits will take precedent over human needs.
Basic needs like water.