In 1998, CocaCola set up a bottling plant in Perumatti in the southern state of Kerala.
Since it opened, local villagers have complained about the fall in the amount of water
available to them and have blamed the fall in supplies on CocaCola who, they claim, use up
to a million liters per day at the plant. CocaCola claims that the shortage in the water is due
to the lack of rains in the region. CocaCola even sends round tankers of water to the region
to help the local community. Local farmers are claiming that their livelihood has been
destroyed since the building of the plant and that the number of people working on the land
has dropped considerably because they cannot survive.
Following the cleaning of the bottles, a waste sludge is produced that CocaCola have
been disposing of on the land of local farmers, claiming it was a useful fertilizer. Following a
BBC Radio 4 program, samples of the sludge were analyzed by scientists at Exeter
University in the southwest of England and found to contain toxic chemicals including lead
and cadmium both of which can be harmful to humans and further suggested that there
was little or no benefit of the sludge as a fertilizer. Recent tests by the local state laboratories
find that the levels of toxic chemicals are within safety levels but that it should not be used as
a fertilizer.
In a separate development, sales of CocaCola have been hit by suggestions that its
drinks produced in India contained higher levels of pesticide residues than was healthy! A
large number of bodies have joined in the local community's campaign demanding the plant
be closed down and that tests be carried out on CocaCola to assess its safety. A lawsuit to
this effect was thrown out in August, which prompted CocaCola to issue an angry comment
claiming that the reports were scurrilous, unnecessarily scared large numbers of CocaCola's
customers and put thousands of jobs in its plants throughout India at risk. CocaCola claims
to employ in excess of 5,000 people in the country, not to mention the many thousands that
are linked in some way to the product.