Posted on 02/28/2002 8:27:37 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
The "Take the Pepsi Challenge" demonstration in the Willard Straight Hall lobby did not involve a taste test as several Cornell students may have anticipated.
Organized by the Cornell Greens and Ecopledge.com, a non-profit environmental organization, yesterday's challenge was mobilized to pressure PepsiCo, Inc. to start using recycled plastic in its products.
The Cornell Greens plan to return empty Pepsi bottles to the company labeled with an individual sponsor's name and return address. Students also wrote messages to the company that would be placed inside the returned bottles.
The Cornell Greens obtained over eighty sponsors in five hours, exceeding its original goal of five sponsors per hour.
To pay for the fifty-seven cent postage necessary to return each empty bottle to Pepsi, the Cornell Greens asked students for donations, which were collected after the demonstration. The organization has already raised thirty dollars for the campaign.
According to the Cornell Greens, Pepsi does not use any recycled plastic in its products, though the company encourages its consumers to recycle individual bottles.
On its Web site, Pepsi states its commitment to the environment and describes one of its "environmentally friendly initiatives" as the "Please Recycle" message on its products. The company does not mention producing its products from recycled material.
This fact surprised many Cornell students, who chose to sponsor the event by filling out a label with their name and address.
"I am very surprised that such a big company can get away with not recycling," said Yiwei Wang '04.
"It is ridiculous that Pepsi is not using recycled bottles," said Ashley St. Amand '05.
Christelle Munnelly '05, the campaign's coordinator, was introduced to this campaign by Frankie Lind '01, a field worker for Ecopledge.com, at the 2001 "Greening the Ivies" convention held at Dartmouth College.
"We were inspired to take on Pepsi after succeeding in a campaign to get Coca-Cola, Inc. to start using recycled plastic in its products," said Munnelly.
Lind participated in the Coca-Cola campaign in the spring of 2000.
"We not only demanded Coca-Cola to be more responsive to the environment, but to honor its own commitment it made in 1990 to use 25 percent recycled plastic in [its] bottles," said Lind.
Coca-Cola now uses 10 percent recycled plastic in its bottles.
Several students' messages to Pepsi referred to Coca-Cola's environmental practices. One message to Pepsi read, "I'll buy Coke products until Pepsi starts taking responsibility."
However, Munnelly stated that the campaign was not about praising one company at the expense of the other.
"We don't want people not to buy Pepsi," she said. "We want Pepsi to change and use more recycled plastic."
Ecopledge.com is also targeting many other corporations such as Staples, Inc. for not selling recycled products and Kraft Foods Holdings, Inc. for its use of genetically engineered ingredients.
Well, first there's the fact I almost fell off my chair with laughter when I read that they raised (drum roll) thirty whole dollars with their campaign. Ooohhh....wow.
Then there's the fact that, in NYS, every bottle of Pepsi has a five cent deposit on it. If you don't return the bottle to the store, Pepsi gets to keep the five cents. So every bottle these ninnies mailed put five cents in Pepsi's pocket!
Gee, if these educated idiots think that giving somebody money is an effective form of protest, then will they please protest me?
Just another example of the liberal idiocy here in "the City of Evil."
That $30.00 thing got me too. What a bunch of dopes. Tomorrows leaders, egad. The pride of The Ivy League. Their parents might better throw their money in a rat hole than send them to college.
So, with $30, that means they can mail about 50 bottles back to Pepsi, at $0.57 postage each. That'll get their attention, for sure.
On the other had, I wonder if these groups have any sort of oversight? $30 is enough for a pizza, a sixpack, and a small bag of college "herb-garden" stock. Be funny if it was a scam.
"Hey, how'd that Pepsi thing work out? Are they gonna start recycling, or what?"
"Workin' fine, duuuude. Got 'em on the run - just need a few more bucks...(burp)"
Here are some interesting little facts for our Ivey League friends...Pepsi doesn't manufacture the bottles themselves. Plastics companies manufacture them. In fact you need 3 separate suppliers just to make one bottle. There is the bottle itself, then there is the cap and finally you have the label. All different types of plactics with specialized machinery and processing. All of the plastics manufacturers have quality checks and when a plastic part does not pass the quality tests it goes back to "regrind". Parts are reground and re-introduced into the manufacturing process. Some companies get away with calling this "pre-consumer waste". I'm pretty sure that is where coke gets its 10% number from.
(No i'm not a plastic manufacturer, I work with a lot of them and have seen the "regrind" process up close and personal.)
Maybe all plastic companies should put the percent of "pre-consumer waste" content on their products. Maybe that would keep the wackos off their backs.
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