Authorities in central Colombia agreed to renew the water license of Coca Cola’s bottler in the Cundinamarca province, but drastically reduced the amount of water the soda manufacturer is allowed to use.
Cundinamarca’s environmental authority (CAR) reduced the water sources available to Indega, which produced Coca Cola bottles in central Colombia, from seven to four after finding that the company left locals without potable water.
The previous license allowed Indega to consume 3.23 liters per second or produce 19,380 600mm bottles of Coca Cola per hour.
The new license only allows the company to consume 1.9 liters per second, forcing a 42% reduction in the company’s bottling capacity.
Instead of the 10-year license the company has been granted since its arrival in La Calera in the 1990’s, the CAR’s latest license will have to be renewed in 2031 after another “rigorous technical and judicial analysis.”
The CAR vowed to monitor the company’s compliance with the production cap in response to social and political pressure from activists and politicians that demanded an end of the overexploitation of the Coca Cola bottler.
The CAR also vowed to guarantee potable water for human consumption in times of drought.
House Representative Maria del Mar Pizarro, who led the opposition to Coca Cola, celebrated the CAR’s decision, claiming that “decades of irregularities have come to an end.”
Coca Cola also bottled and sold water without a license between 1993 and 1996 and between 2006 and 2014.
Throughout the 2000’s, food and drink union Sinaltrainal said that unionized workers at the plant in La Calera were being threatened.
Coca-Cola has a long history of scandals and reported human rights violations in Colombia, such as when there were credible allegations tying the multinational to paramilitary groups that were threatening workers.
According to workers and the Colombian food and drink union Sinaltrainal plant managers explicitly threatened to use paramilitary force against workers in the Carepa plant in northern Colombia.
The assassination of a prominent union leader, Isidro Segundo Gil, inside a Coca-Cola plant, marked a turning point and led to the mass resignation of union members.
Between 1990 and 2002, at least 10 Sinaltrainal leaders were killed.
