Coca-Cola has been the symbolic target of anti-American sentiments in the past.
The Coca-Cola statement on the Japanese triple crisis of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power disaster is straightforward. Coca-Cola sends condolences, pledges $7.3 million in cash and products, and is running TV and radio ads to encourage energy conservation.
What’s missing is a response to the claim that one million Coca-Cola vending machines might be a major consumer of Japan’s scarce electricity. Most are apparently still running as rolling blackouts from the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns plague the beleaguered Japanese people and hurt the Japanese auto industry.
Is this an urban myth or real issue? I frankly don’t know at this time – and Japanese companies such as Suntory and Kirin also operate large networks of vending machines.
Coca-Cola’s U.S. website leads with “Where Will Happiness Strike Next?” but a response to these simple questions thus far goes unanswered: How many of your or your agents’ vending machines are in use in Japan? What is their actual power consumption? Will you turn them off? Aside from running public service announcements and making relief donations, what will you do to help the growing Japanese crisis?
These are tough questions for any profit-making business. Turning off Coca-Cola vending machines means lost revenue – if in fact they are a factor here. So profits are potentially threatened.
“Across eastern Japan, we are experiencing rolling power buy tadalafil online cuts and train service cuts to compensate for the nuclear plant outages. The most electric power-hungry products are soft-drinks machines that have both refrigeration and heating (for hot canned coffee) and Coca-Cola has perhaps the largest network of beverage machines across Japan,” says John Harris, a Japan based speechwriter and AutoInformed contributor, who along with millions of others in Japan is dealing with the aftershocks of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
“We’ve reduced energy consumption of existing machines by turning off the lights of machines in all indoor locations for 24 hours. We’ve been turning off the lights of machines in outdoor locations even during the night time, excluding some machines at specific locations where the lighting should remain on for public safety,” Kanako Ogata, a Coca-Cola spokeswoman told the Japan Times on Thursday as the issue surfaced in Japan.
The question now facing Coca-Cola is what really is involved in the responsible citizenship that its mission statement endorses? Anytime a corporate statement moves into claims of citizenship – it moves beyond its actual duty to shareholders, which is the pursuit of profits. (And virtually all multinational corporations employ such language.)
Here I readily admit that there is room for debate; a debate that should be conducted based on facts – starting with the claim that Coca-Cola is part of the problem. However, Coca-Cola must be more forthcoming as this human tragedy unfolds.
Ken,
There is absolutely no doubt that 980,000 Coke machines across Japan (Coke PR’s number) are a major consumer of power here. Although Coke claims lights have been turned off, we see no evidence of that. And this is breath-takingly disingenuous because the light on any refrigerator draws little power. Coke machines here dispense both hot and cold product — which indicates each one likely draws more than 4500 kWh per year.
Here in rural Japan at the very south of the tsunami zone (we got 3-foot surge) we have only sporadic train service and rolling power cuts. But we are surrounded by low-sales-volume Coke machines. There is no myth about this, urban or rural. And there is no malice toward Coke in this. We’re focusing on Coke because they are global, they take CSR seriously, and they understand importance of long-term global brand management. If customers speak up, they will act.
You can help us here in Japan by asking Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent to unplug his half-million machines on the east Japan grid. As one Coke machine uses about as much power as the average household over 24 hours, this would be equivalent to eliminating residential demand from a city of up to 1m people.
From the Japan Vending Machine Assn. we know there are 5.51m vending machines nationwide. If Coke unplugs theirs, rivals will follow suit.
I know that a lot of your readers are gearheads. Engineers, please pin down the stats on this for us!