It is not too often that multinational firms and big industries get credit for social service activities beneficial to large populations in the area where they carry out their manufacturing operations. It is a fact that food processing industry needs massive quantity of water for their production activities and spew out large quantities of waste water with high pollution potential. The Coca Cola experience in Kerala, India is a classical example of an industry which became a "villain" for people in the villages near the bottling plant precisely because of drastic depletion of ground water and contamination of the local water supply sources from effluent seepage. Now comes the welcome news about the same company, probably after learning from their past experience, helping the people to augment water supplies through modern rain harvesting technology.
"The projects have the combined capacity to harvest 36 lakh liters (3.6 million liters) of rainwater annually, benefiting the schools and surrounding communities. "Rain water harvesting has emerged as a viable option to redirect rainwater into the ground, which otherwise goes waste," said Dr. Saleem Romani, former chairman of the Central Ground Water Board, according to ImagesFood.com. "We need to persuade more people and society at large to take up rain water harvesting projects."But the project isn't a first. Coca-Cola (Nasdaq:KO) and its bottling partners have installed more than 500 rain water harvesting projects in 22 states in the country, in an effort to contribute to better water management. In other environmental efforts, Coke and its bottling partners said last month all their new vending machines and coolers are expected to be hydrofluorocarbon-free (HFC) by 2015. The move to HFC-free refrigeration is expected to reduce the equipment's direct greenhouse gas emissions by 99 percent".
While the new approach and attitude will be widely welcomed, these industrial giants must go further in identifying themselves with the aspirations of local people by investing and involving in more socially relevant and impact making projects setting aside their corporate goals of increased profits in what ever they do. There are many areas crying for attention like education, infrastructure, old age homes, child care centers, health programs etc and any contribution from them in these areas will be greatly appreciated and remembered.
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