Community | March 18, 2010 | 14 comments

Pepsi plant in India under scrutiny for groundwater depletion

source: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/pepsi-plant-under-kerala-scanner/388968/

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JanforGore
Taking a serious note of the alleged exploitation of groundwater by Pepsi, a committee of the Kerala Assembly today recommended imposition of curbs on extraction of water by the multinational cola giant’s plant at Pudussery in Palakkad district.

The report, tabled in the Assembly, however, did not ask for the closure of the plant, which provides employment to 3,500 people. The plant, situated over 53 acres, uses nearly 48.5 per cent of the ground water, according to the report.

Panel Chairman and state Water Resources Minister N K Premachandran said the key suggestion was to impose restrictions on water extraction by Pepsi at 234,000 litres per day from the current average of 700,000 litres a day.

On the issue whether the plant was causing water pollution, the report said the possibility could not be ruled out, but required detailed study.

The committee said industrial units using groundwater as the main raw material should be generally discouraged. The report comes at a time when a high-level panel is finalising its report on “socio-economic” damage allegedly caused by the Coca Cola plant at Plachimada, also in Palakkad district, which has been declared a drought-hit area. Premachandran said the high-level committee, headed by Additional Chief Secretary K Jayakumar, is expected to submit the report soon.

A PepsiCo spokesperson said: “We have just learnt about the report tabled in the Kerala Assembly and will need to go through it in detail before commenting on it.”

“However, Palakkad is a model plant and is one of the most water efficient units in the PepsiCo system. Through innovative recycling and recharging techniques, the plant has been able to save about 200 million litres of water in the last four years and has also brought down the water usage by 60 per cent.”

The spokesperson added that: “An independent study in 2009, by a renowned research institute, concluded that the impact of PepsiCo’s Palakkad plant on the depleting ground water level in the area is insignificant. According to the report, PepsiCo is utilising only 0.7 per cent of the total annual water consumption in the area. It further states that the groundwater use by the PepsiCo plant is negligible in comparison to other water users.”

Incidentally, rival Coca-Cola India, too, was charged with ground-water depletion in the past. In 2004, following investigation by the Central Ground Water Board in Kaladera, Rajasthan, the multinational was held responsible for depleting ground water level in the region. The company’s plant was found to be extracting huge amounts of ground water causing ecological imbalances in the region.
  1. groups:
    Community,   Green,   Human Rights,   Water Is Life
  2. tags:
    Environment,  India,  Poverty,  Globalization,  2 more
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14 comments // Pepsi plant in India under scrutiny for groundwater depletion

  • Chapisbored
  • animaladvocate
    • +2
      animaladvocate  

    • I just watched Flow for the love of water yesterday and they talked about the Coca Cola plant in Bolivia I believe and the people fought back and Coca Cola had to leave. These big corporations take all of the water and dump sludge. This happens here, too! Nestle bottles ground water in Michigan while taking the area's ground water and charging 10 times the amount to the people of Michigan. Here's part 1 on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6xWxncrZ6U please watch it!!!

    • 1 year ago
  • carmalite
    • +2
      carmalite  

    • American corporations doing what they do best: making profit by harming others.
      Capitalism is a failure. But it works so well for the very rich and powerful.

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
  • corndog67
    • -5
      corndog67  

    • Another anti corporate thread. They should just close it and put 3500 Indians out of work. And let them piss and shit in the water like they already do. How about an article about the water pollution caused by the people that live there?

    • 1 year ago
  • Juas
    • +3
      Juas  
    • corndog67:

      Idiot.
      So based on your opinion, if a corporation kills thousands of people, we should just let them be, because people die anyways. haha.

      Also, what makes you so certain people piss in that certain indian river?

      If you dont know anything, you should really just shut your mouth man, you are making american look stupid.

    • 1 year ago
  • carmalite
    • 0
      carmalite  
    • corndog67:

      Yea, we are not supposed to talk outloud about any harm they do or even if the kill thousands of people. If we talk about it, then we are bashing capitalism or rather lassiez-faire capitalism. And we can't take one penny from the billionair CEOs who make decisions and harm peasants and ordinary people. They are above reproach because of the money God. THe Money God makes everything all right. Lieing is just a way to make more money.
      If you don't discuss mistakes you can keep on making them and that is why you and many others do not want to discuss this. To save a penny, they will destroy anything.

    • 1 year ago
  • animaladvocate
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  
    • corndog67:

      More ignorance in a thread. Those 3500 people could make a good living being allowed to farm for themselves or building solar panels or any other job besides being slaves to corporate a**holes who don't care one whit about their lives outside of the labor they can extort from them for pennies.

    • 1 year ago
  • corndog67
    • 0
      corndog67  
    • JanforGore:

      Their country doesn't even care what happens to them. Why should we? And the remark about not having flush toilets, it's true, they shit and piss anywhere and pollute their own drinking water. At least working for Pepsi, they get a paycheck. Growing their own food? Building solar panels? For who? Another corporation. And extorting labor from them, well, they can always become beggars, like half the population is already. Or they can work. It's up to them.

      As for the harm they are doing to India, why doesn't the Indian government do something about it? Because they don't care, and are probably getting paid off.

      And Carmalite is right, money rules the world. I wish I had more of it.

    • 1 year ago
  • slarabee
  • bailey78
  • CaptB
    • +1
      CaptB  

    • Water is the up and coming commodity in the world. They need the employment for the local population. Otherwise, it would be easy for the local government to enact laws to remove the corporations. Or is it?

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.dawn.com/2005/01/21/int10.htm
      And they've been doing it for years and denying it. They say they use a 'miniscule' amount of water. Please, how stupid do they think we are?
      ______
      Excerpt:
      Thousands of students and farmers on Thursday surrounded Pepsi and Coca-Cola factories in a "Quit India" campaign, accusing the US giants of selling soft drinks laced with pesticides.

      They lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in a five-kilometre chain around a Pepsi bottling plant at this central Indian township. The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), which organized the protests, said nearly 100,000 people targeted more than 80 soft drink plants across India.

      Villagers and onlookers joined in at Mandideep as several thousand protesters carried banners demanding the closure of both companies in India. "The factories must close down as they are not only are guilty of uncertain standards in their drinks but they are also depleting groundwater," said protester Vinay Sagar.

      "We are very worried by the continuous degradation which the company has caused to the groundwater in the region," said Sagar, saying Pepsi daily extracts 200,000 litres of ground water from the parched region.

      Mandideep is some 20 kilometres from the central Indian city of Bhopal, which 20 years ago was devastated by the world's deadliest industrial disaster when toxic gas leaked from a Union Carbide pesticides plant killing thousands.

      Most of the protesters then moved to Pilukhedi, 40 kilometres the other side of Bhopal, where they surrounded a Coca-Cola factory - one of the biggest bottling plants in the country.

      The RFSTE reported similar protests at Pepsi and Coke plants in cities such as Mumbai, capital of western Maharastra state, but a Pepsi spokeswoman said about 20 schoolchildren turned up at one of the company's 37 plants in western India.

      Last month the Supreme Court upheld a lower court judgment ordering Pepsi and Coca-Cola to print warnings on their bottles in India that the drinks may contain pesticide residues.

      The US firms deny their drinks pose health hazards. The cola rivals, which account for 99 per cent of India's huge soft drinks market, have joined forces in the two-year legal battle that rumbles on.

      Their lawyers said use of pesticides in agriculture resulted in trace residues in sugar. The US drinks manufacturers are not only under fire over pesticide residues but also over allegations they are draining areas of groundwater.

      Attempts to close a Coca-Cola plant in drought-hit Plachimada village in southern Kerala state have become an environmental cause celebre. Environmentalists charge it is extracting groundwater and parching the region where farmers have been badly hit, but the companies say they use a miniscule amount of water.

      The "Quit India" slogan used by the environmentalists was coined by Mahatma Gandhi in 1942 during the struggle against British colonial rule.
      ____
      THIRTY SEVEN plants in Western India. And they only use a miniscule amount of water? THIRTY SEVEN.

    • 1 year ago
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