A can of Coke
Have you any idea what goes into a can of coke? It's the manufacturing process that I'm talking about. Well I read a report this week that fascinated me. James Womack and Daniel Jones in their book "Lean Thinking" traced the origins and pathways of a can of "English" coke.
I quote:
"The can itself is more costly and complicated to manufacture than the cola. Bauxite is mined in Australia and trucked to a chemical reduction mill where a half hour process purifies each ton of bauxite into a half ton of aluminium oxide. When enough is stockpiled, it is loaded on a giant ore carrier and sent to Sweden or Norway, where hydroelectric dams provide cheap electricity. After a month long journey across two oceans, it usually sits at the smelter for as long as two months.
"The smelter takes two hours to turn each half of aluminium oxide into a quarter ton of aluminium metal, in ingots ten metres long. These are cured for two weeks before being shipped to roller mills in Sweden or Germany. There each ingot is heated to nearly nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit and rolled down to the thickness of an eighth of an inch. The resulting sheets are wrapped in ten-ton coiles and transported to a warehouse, and then to a cold rolling mill in the same or another country, where they are rolled tenfold thinner, ready for fabrication. The aluminium is then sent to England, where sheets are punched and formed into cans, which are washed, dried, painted with a base coat, and then painted again with specific product information. The cans are next lacquered, flanged (they are still topless), SPRAYED INSIDE WITH A PROTECTIVE COATING TO PREVENT THE COLA FROM CORRODING THE CAN (my capitals) and inspected.
"The cans are palletised; fork lifted, and warehoused until needed. They are then shipped to the bottler, where they are washed and cleaned once more, then filled with water mixed with flavoured syrup, phosphorus, caffeine, and carbon dioxide gas. The sugar is harvested from beet fields in France and undergoes trucking, milling, refining, and shipping. The phosphorus comes from Idaho, where it is excavated from deep open-pit mines – A PROCESS THAT ALSO UNEARTHS CADMIUM AND RADIOACTIVE THORIUM (my capitals). Round the clock the mining company uses the same amount of electricity as a city of 100,000 people in order to reduce the phosphate to food grade quality. The caffeine is shipped from a chemical manufacturer to the syrup manufacturer in England.
"The filled cans are sealed with aluminium "pop top" lids at the rate of fifteen hundred cans per minute, and then inserted into cardboard cartons printed with matching colour and promotional schemes. The cartons are made of forest pulp that may have originated anywhere from Sweden or Siberia to the old-growth, virgin forests of British Columbia that are the home of grizzly bears, wolverines, otters and eagles. Palletised again the cans are shipped to a regional distribution warehouse, and shortly thereafter to a supermarket where a typical can is purchased within three days. The consumer buys twelve ounces of the phosphate tinged, caffeine-impregnated, caramel-flavoured sugar water. Drinking cola takes a few minutes; throwing the can away takes a second. IN ENGLAND CONSUMERS DISCARD 84% OF ALL CANS (MY CAPITALS), which means that the overall rate of aluminium waste, after counting production losses is 88%. Every product that we consume has a similar hidden history, an unwritten inventory of its materials, resources and impacts."
What on earth are we doing to ourselves and our world?
