What is the role of “sponsor”? Is it merely giving lots of money in exchange for visibility? If so, wouldn’t you in fact want to extract as much value out of the worst polluters and direct it towards change efforts?

I feel like people often miss the fact that data is only so useful in analysis. Analysis is where you’d decide, in our less than perfect world, that you want the biggest polluters supporting the biggest changes.

If anyone has evidence that the cocoa cola company was able to convince panelists, speakers, representatives and attendees that they shouldn’t talk about plastic or water issues we have journalistic awards standing by.

Don’t forget that Coca Cola co. is only a syrup marketing company. Manufacturing, containers, distribution and reclamation are not handled directly by them. This is all handled regionally by separate companies under contract. If there were perfectly safe and reusable containers tomorrow they would be the first adopters because it would be good for their brand. Coca Cola exists because people can be convinced to drink sugar. They do not exist to pollute the world.

To those who will scoff at this graph, go ahead and be smug about “irony” and feel good about your own brilliance while nothing substantial gets done otherwise.