i think coke needs to green more than it's headquarters in Atlanta. how about trying to not suck up all the clean water from, say, rural India. or how about making products that don't poison people with the amount of sugar they use. this is total corporate greenwashing.

Awesome. I love Cherry Coke.

Three million lousy bucks is that all they can cough up to try and undo there pollution mess and water theft. Three million bucks sounds like a bit of small change for the PR department. i'm sure they will spend more to tell every one about it.
What about Thirty billion dollars and observing the rights of all the people affected by there product. Including Australians that suffer from coke sucking springs dry and only paying $2.40 per million litres. Thats cheap water for a country in severe drought. Pretty bad for the food growers in the same region.
Coke has absolutely no green cred for me and it never will.

That's great that their "going green" in one office building. What about their bottling plants all over the world that deplete ground water? What about their millions of plastic bottles which are shipped far and wide only to feed sugar water to the world's poorest and pollute their streets and communities? Maybe they should invest that 3 million into educating themselves about their own deplorable environmental record.
Treehugger, while I appreciate most of your blogging efforts, it pains me to see the lack of critical thinking in reporting these stories. Where is the context? If we continue to see efforts like this as moving forward while ignoring the bigger issues that set back efforts to make a safer, greener world, wouldn't that be called 'green washing'? If TH continues to dumb down real environmental problems with companies like Coca Cola then TH is just a part of the problem.

I wrote the article in the context of providing an example of corporations in the U.S. greening their buildings. It's not always possible to sum of the entire environment impact of corporation in a one paragraph post.

Justin

Coca Cola has a long way to go before their brown sludge of a corporate mess becomes green.

The negativity disturbs me. I feel it is uncivil to take good news as merely an opportunity to complain about a different problem, such as these controversies in India or Australia. Positive changes should be encouraged, not criticized.

Charles,
The negativity is because the information wasn't put into context. The way it's presented you might think that Coke is doing great things for the environment. That's not the case. They're doing one tiny thing good and a whole bunch that's deplorable. Sure, doing something about that one building is good though the context of that is that without much more action it's really only a cheap PR stunt. More than that, it's frustrating that Treehugger looks like it's helping Coke by taking the bait and not asking questions.

Charles and Verdi,

There seems to be a perception among some readers of TreeHugger that posting a news article about a company constitutes an endorsement of that company's policies. If ExxonMobil decided to green their offices I would write about that too, because it would be an interesting development in the green building world.

Justin

I think it's dangerous to simply swallow all news as good news. Sure, it's a step, but what does it really mean? Does it mean Coke makes headlines for a second, turns a few heads and then chugs on it's merry way? I received this very same press release from Coca Cola and I promptly wrote them back inquiring into what other efforts their employing with their water depletion issues and until any of that is addressed I don't think it's news. Anyone can change their light bulbs. With the power and wealth that Coke is capable of, their light bulb changing does not impress me. Sorry.
I realize this is a one paragraph post, but for TH I'm just wondering what the standard is for 'green blogging'? Is it true that any step in this direction is a good step, even if no other steps follow?
If we aren't critical and curious and passionate about our water and our air then we aren't going to change anything.

Large, established corporations, due to their size and longevity, have different views and expectations by many people.

My view is that corporations are made of people (wouldn't exist otherwise) who individually make choices. The actions of prior administrators does not necessarily reflect the current management. There isn't group guilt whether it is by family, race, class, or business. Each new individual is responsible for their new actions, not that of another. The current leaders of Coca Cola need to be held responsible for what they've done on their watch (including cleaning up past administrators actions, if any.) And people should be found guilty based on accurate proof, not just accusation.

That said, there's much that can be done to influence Coca Cola to practices that are healthy for people. Corporations are beholden to customers and stockholders. And those are the groups I think would be most effective to educate on what Coca-Cola can change to.

I agree that it's important to support positive efforts and not to always follow them up with pointing out the negatives. We need to keep things moving in the right direction, change takes time. But using this kind of thinking when dealing with a company as big and bad as Coke is unresponsible. Coke is attrocious in it's use and abuse of water with the worst effects of their pracitses being felt in the poorest of communities. They're sucking people dry. You can find a little information on Coke on the StopCorporateAbuse dot org website.

http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/index.cfm?group_id=1000

http://www.stopcorporateabusenow.org/campaign/hallofshame

Let us indeed keep in mind the context. Business culture is historically skeptical of Green. This initiative was probably spearheaded by a small team of people like us, working from the inside. Their work is being judged on its results, and there is a conversation happening, with skeptics looking for evidence that environmentalist wackos are implacable and not worth pandering to; that the old ways are just fine and the VP behind this idea should be fired. Now they receive angry letters telling them this wasn't good enough, and demanding they tear down and rebuild their entire corporation from the ground up! Which side of the conversation do you imagine this helps?

Prudence, as well as Justice, demand we reward only what is good and punish only what is wrong.

charles

maybe it's not that way at all. maybe because of this greening they might start listening to what else needs to happen in order for people to take their environmental efforts seriously. maybe they do need to hear the rest of the story. i don't think it's beneficial to say f*ck coke, that's not good enough. but i do think it's beneficial to say good first step, now onto the other things that need changing.

Any good point or thesis should highlight all angles of what is being explored; good, bad, productive, unproductive etc. The first step to change is knowledge. By knowing all aspects we can make judgments and opinions. That is the clearest friction point with this post. I don't think anybody is asking for a lot of written material. No post should ever be without questions, both for and against the point made.

It's too bad that I see the questioning, or lack there of, on both sides of this post have been met with friction. Questioning should always be seen as an opportunity for growth. We all have a voice and if we don't exercise that voice and respect and meet those voices, what good is this communications technology really for? There is a big difference between an argument, and a discussion. Perhaps there can be a clearer post having read all the responses. Or references as to where this information came from, and who it was directed to.

Before we can influence a major corporation like coke (which I don't see happening in the near future) we have be able to influence each other through conversation, and dialogue. Not argument, and criticism.

I think this is interesting.
Apple inc. Has just releaced a statement about its "green" policies as well.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/

With so many companies now moving towards "greener" systems of business I wonder how much of it is P.R. and how much is genuine. At the same time I wonder if companies really know what it means to be greener, and does Apple's ideas differ from Cokes?

Justin,

It's important to realize that this is not a NEWS article, but merely a summary of a press release from Coke. It was published here on a "green" site without additional commentary or context from the publisher of Treehugger, or even any indication that it was basically a summary of an official press release. It's not NEWS REPORTING to merely republish a PRESS RELEASE.

Everyone else,

It's important to trust but verify when a company makes big announcements about GREENING their business. Ask yourself these questions when you hear things like this. Is there a PR angle? Does the company have some bad PR issues that this announcement might be designed to mitegate? Does this new effort actually address the issues that caused the bad PR to begin with? It should be easy to see what they are up to once these questions are answered.

In this case it seems clear that Coca-Cola is merely greening their headquarters to off-set some of the really bad Environmental PR that they've gotten in recent years. Because they aren't announcing any efforts to green any other part of their business.

I'm surprised by the many negative comments this article has received! Coca-Cola may have a long way to go before many of us in the treehugger crowd are completely happy with them, but this one building, even changing in just a few small ways, is a step in the right direction. Boards of large cooperations are often stubborn and wary of change. When the modifications in this building begin to pay off they will (hopefully!) start making more and greater green-friendly changes. These things are part of a process and can not happen over night. Seeing such a large, international company like Coca-Cola take note of the global environment and start moving in a greener direction should be something to rejoice. It means the cooperate world is not blind to their decisions and know the general public is becoming more environmentally knowledgeable, and are beginning to act on that knowledge. A lot of it may be just for marketing, but think about the positive ramifications of green marketing schemes! Even just twenty years ago only a small fraction of the average public changed the way they shopped due to green concerns. Companies are concerned with the best and easiest way to sell you a product. Today they still want to sell you a product, but they know more and more consumers want more environmentally friendly products. They are already starting to compete with each other to due just that. This will take years to make a large impact, but the point is that it will make an impact. As a consumer it is your job to demand change, but don't wine when companies aren't changing fast enough, be glad they are starting to roll the snowball, it will only grow.

James

Well I guess there doing something for the environment it is better than nothing I guess its not like Pepsi does any thing for the environment my biggest concern is the mass production of the plastic bottles and what like barely any get recycled we should create markets for them and try to encourage the use of reusable glass bottles or at least offer the glass bottles as an alternative packaging cause you think that they would save money on reusable because they wouldn't have to buy so many none reusable bottles especially if the states that have a deposit on them so they have to take the packaging back any ways so they mises as well reuse them right or encourage the market to use aluminum bottles they could pass a recycled content law on the aluminum to mark the market demand even higher which would in courage more people to bring in there aluminum in for recycling for more cash even I know lots of people that just throw them away we sould try ti discourage that you would think