Question, am i breaking a comandment if i drink coca cola

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question, am i breaking a comandment if i drink coca cola.

I have heard that the coca cola company has a factory in South Africa. And is using an hydranic (sp?) pump to suck the water out of the earth.
leaving no water for the children to wash in. Very little to drink for every body and not nearly enough to keep the farms going there.

If i drink coca cola products, am i encoriging this behavior? am i suporting their actions?

Help…

Confused
 
emarwood said:
question, am i breaking a comandment if i drink coca cola.

I have heard that the coca cola company has a factory in South Africa. And is using an hydranic (sp?) pump to suck the water out of the earth.
leaving no water for the children to wash in. Very little to drink for every body and not nearly enough to keep the farms going there.

If i drink coca cola products, am i encoriging this behavior? am i suporting their actions?

Help…

Confused
Click to expand...
I would think boycotting Coca Cola is your personal choice. You could trace a lot of major companies back to some kind of sin. For example, Nestle got mothers hooked on their baby formula in third world countries.

I am sure a lot of companies we buy from donate money to causes we support. Let’s say Bill Gates donates to Planned Parenthood… Would it be a sin to use Windows? I respect your conscience, and would think it is a sin if you personally feel it is wrong. It is not a sin unless you know you are doing something wrong.
 
emarwood said:
question, am i breaking a comandment if i drink coca cola.

I have heard that the coca cola company has a factory in South Africa. And is using an hydranic (sp?) pump to suck the water out of the earth.
leaving no water for the children to wash in. Very little to drink for every body and not nearly enough to keep the farms going there.

If i drink coca cola products, am i encoriging this behavior? am i suporting their actions?

Help…

Confused
Click to expand...
Well, assuming that you don’t actually live in South Africa, Coca Cola’s operations in the different countries are usually pretty independent of each other. I don’t feel that you as an individual consumer would be responsible enough for what such a massive international company does in each and every part of the world to be worrying about such things.

As has been said, most large companies do indulge to a greater or lesser degree in dodgy activities. They also donate to a lot of good causes, provide jobs and other benefits for many hundreds of thousands of people as well.
 
The reson for my upset of the coca cola company is.
On the documenty that brought it to light. A little girl and her dad was showing the camera crew what they could see. The big factory pumping the water.
The girl asked her daddy why they couldn’t have some of that water. He told her that water was for the rich people.
Then she just cryed her heart out.
She is just a little girl
 
emarwood said:
The reson for my upset of the coca cola company is.
On the documenty that brought it to light. A little girl and her dad was showing the camera crew what they could see. The big factory pumping the water.
The girl asked her daddy why they couldn’t have some of that water. He told her that water was for the rich people.
Then she just cryed her heart out.
She is just a little girl
Click to expand...
If you feel so strongly about it then it is probably best if you do boycott Coca Cola products. More importantly write to them and let them know why you’re boycotting. But bear in mind that you don’t know the whole story.

You don’t know alternatives that are available to the father for example. Presumably Coca Cola doesn’t own all the resources of all the towns in his area, so it’s quite possible, for example, that he could move elsewhere.

Boycotting company products for the most part is an individual choice, and people who choose not to do so usually aren’t committing any sin by using the products.
 
actually, I believe the green activists who are calling for a boycott of coke and pepsi are more concerned with the bottled water these companies sell. they allege that the have acquired water rights in areas that deprive local farmers and citizens of good water, that the bottling process uses 12 oz of ground water for every 8 oz bottled and that the end result is to deprive populations of clean safe water supplies, and to deplete ground water. I am sure there is a website someplace with these claims, we had a nun give a presentation to our DREs a few months ago and if I find that material I will post a link.

whether or not an individual chooses to boycott a company or product is an individual choice. The Church has not issued a definitive teaching on this issue so it is not a sin for a Catholic to purchase products of companies in question. The first thing to do is be sure of the facts upon which such a decision is based. There was a charge against Nestle several years ago regarding use of its infant formulas. I was part of a group that did investigate on behalf of our church, and found the charges to be groundless. I am sure there are still those who disagree with our conclusion. I personally do not purchase Disney brand merchandise because of mfg. conditions in Haiti where much of their licensed clothing lines are made. My judgement was made on the basis of my personal knowledge of journalists and missionaries who did investigate, although I believe a documentary film on the topic was also produced. But I am not more moral than you for that decision, nor would I be breaking a commandment if I bought a Mickey Mouse hat.
 
emarwood said:
question, am i breaking a comandment if i drink coca cola.

I have heard that the coca cola company has a factory in South Africa. And is using an hydranic (sp?) pump to suck the water out of the earth.
leaving no water for the children to wash in. Very little to drink for every body and not nearly enough to keep the farms going there.

If i drink coca cola products, am i encoriging this behavior? am i suporting their actions?

Help…

Confused
Click to expand...
Coca-cola is bottled by independant factories. First you need to find out if it is a Coca-cola owned syrup plant or an independant bottler. Boycotting the Coca-cola Co. will be more difficult than you think unless you just want to boycott the drink. If you have the source article you can post a petition on petition.com (I think that’s it anyway) and print out the signatures and mail them to the factory and the corporate headquarters.
 
has anyone run this through Snopes? Sounds like another urban legend.

And as to the Greens and their bottled water bit, it may or may not take 12 oz. water to fill an 8 oz bottle; but I seriously and sincerely doubt that the world is running out of water. There are serious issues of potable water in many areas, but they are not due to Evian.

Why I have a problem with the Greens - we are destroying the world by wasting water, all the while Greenhouse Gases are causing the water levels to rise to unprecedented heights and flooding the lowlands with water that no one can use because there is too much of it…

hunh?
 
emarwood , where did you see this documentary? Could you tell us the name?
 
Here is the flip side of the coin:

MWA, with start-up funding from The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, is implementing the Schools Safe Water System (SWS) program in 45 schools among three districts of Nyanza
Province in Western Kenya.

The Ministry of Education, local health officials, teachers and school committees are participating in the program, which focuses on schools in order to teach children proper
hand-washing techniques and latrine usage during their formative years to promote a culture of hygienic practices.

In addition to children’s education, the program incorporates boreholes, drip irrigation systems and POU water treatment technology. This program serves as a pilot for planned
additional programming to target 500 schools in the future through the Global Water Challenge. MWA web site
As part of its health benefits package, the Africa strategic business unit offers employees, spouses and dependents HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, including access to antiretroviral drugs. In 2002, the Foundation began to provide funding for the program to our African bottling partners, as needed. Approximately two-thirds of bottler employees had completed prevention and awareness programs by the end of 2003. Coca Cola Web Site

NEW YORK — Coca-Cola Co. said Wednesday it would help to bring clean drinking water to parts of Africa in a plan to work with local communities on environmental issues like water management. ENN
 
I’d say you’d want to get some confirmation on the story, also. As we all know, what we see on television or even in documentaries isn’t always true, and many times people can be mistaken.

Just as we can’t just believe gossip about our neighbors, we ought to get proof before we believe allegations against corporations and governments.
 
Is not the coke bottled in America bottled with American water? I definitely noticed a slight difference in taste while in Italy because the water was different or if not the water, something was different.
 
Levi86. Did you by chance skip reading post #10? Did anyone ever think what the water they are taking out of the ground is used for? Well, after it is purified and filtered, a little syrup and sugar is added and guess what? They drink it! What’s wrong with that?
 
By the way, a portion of the proceeds from Ethos bottled water goes to combatting water shortages in underdeveloped nations – or so they claim.

Peace,
Dante
 
Oooops! I thought this topic was about the sip of diet Coke I take before I get out of the car to go into mass. :bigyikes:
 
Interesting question. It seems to me that this is a question of conscience vs. personal pleasures. In other words, what matters more to you - drinking Coke or working for the social justice issue of water made available to all?
As has already been pointed out in this thread, it would be impossible to try and boycott every product by every company that has engaged in something morally questionable. On the other hand, that is no reason to give up altogether. Our consciences, when rightly formed, are one of our best channels to know the will of God. Perhaps this twinge in your conscience is God’s way of calling you to look into the matter. If it’s true that Coca-Cola is depriving people of fresh water just to produce a luxury item, I think that’s clearly immoral and the world could use someone to lead an investigation, circulate petitions, etc.
I’m rambling. The point is that I think you need to ask yourself what matters most to you - are you willing to deprive yourself of a sweet treat like Coke? Or are you so attached to that pleasure that you don’t dig into the issue to find out if they are truly depriving people of water?
I hope that made sense … felt like I was rambling an awful lot …
 
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