I also think most people have no idea how much shit is owned by coke, so maybe they’re leaving coke on the shelves but buying some other brands owned by them instead? Also yeah Europeans sure love their coke zero and it’s gonna be tough getting everyone to stop, there’s probably correlation between liking coke and not giving a shit about politics.
When these companies reach certain sizes they’re almost boycott proof. Simply insane how large they’re allowed to become.
Coca Cola is owned by The Coca Cola Company, whose owner (or well, group with largest share) is Berkshire Hathaway Inc., owned by Warren Buffett (with his successor being Greg Abel). Ajit Jainil is a vice chairman, whose cousin was a co-CEO of the Deutsche Bank.
Coca Cola also sponsored Trump.
It also has insurance companies which invest in policy premiums in some companies, up to many billions. Visa, Mastercard, Kraft Heinz, T-mobile, Mitsubishi, to name a few.
Companies are evil. Every single one that’s big is one too many.
We should develop an app, downloadable from multiple app stores, to automatically scan a product and see if it’s ultimately owned by a billionnaire and where some companies don’t have workplace democracy. And the app should offer alternatives, from which you can order. Can someone on Lemmy here do it?
scan a product and see if it’s ultimately owned by a billionnaire
Unless you’re in a thrift store or flea market, the answer is yes.
I dunno, I feel like it is possible for a company to be worker-owned with workplace democracy, where the highest-earning worker earns only one and a half times as much as the lowest earning, instead of hundreds of times more.
And even then, I think wages shouldn’t be a thing at all - but instead that economies should be need-focused, rather than profit-focused.
It would be great if for example woodcutters delivered wood directly to farmers, farmers food directly to woodcutters, and truck drivers received goods directly from both, and so on.
No wages, just cooperation without monetisation.
Works at the small scale, but as you grow, so does human greed.
https://many.bio/nothanksboycott not exactly what you’re talking about but still worthwhile
Oh hey, thanks! That’s actually pretty useful. Saved.
It’s exactly what I’m looking for, design-wise. If the app also had a customisation option for billionnaire companies without workplace democracy and the like…
There’s also BuyFromEU, BuyEuropean AI (that one is closest to what I meant) and Boycat, now that I looked further.
Yeah it’s really great. The creator, Ahmed Bashbash made it completely free and any donations he gives directly to Palestinian organisations to support those in need. He’s also open to people volunteering to help with researching for bad brands etc. (I’ve no connection to him I just love the app and really hate genocide)
Would love a personalized warning list, to add companies (and automatically any owners/siblings) that flags products as I scan them.
“No thanks” app
I am one of those who still gets cola zero :(
At this point I think it’s an addiction, I didn’t find something else from the EU to match it and was not successful thus far to quit it entirely.
But I’m still trying…
I suppose it may be time to expand the 30% tariff retaliation to anything owned by US companies.
I do better by avoiding sodas altogether… it’s sugar in a bottle, no thanks.
My sister doesn’t give her kids cola because of the sugar. It just has slightly more than bought orange juice and aplle juice and all that shit.
You get juices with no added sugar nowadays
That’s still a bunch of sugar with no fiber from the actual fruit to offset it.
That’s a different matter altogether. Just saying coke doesn’t have “slightly” more but a lot more sugar
@Sunshine Lemmy… I first thought it was a reddit post but it is not! A fedi reddit alternative? Yes please!
I’m glad I can choose to drink that. Other places like Mexico city where potable water is fully contaminated don’t have that choice. Its usually Coca cola and other industrial beverage manufacturers the ones polluting the water or helping to reduce access to it…for obvious reasons$$$$.
Haven’t had a coca cola in about 10 years. I’m doing my part!
Coke free for a couple years. I’m doing my part
I think I wrote this recently elsewhere, but I just never drink nor desire soda. It just doesn’t even occur to me as a thing to want. When I was a kid, we mostly drank water. It’s kind of alienating to realize how many other people are seemingly fundamentally different on such a basic part of life like “drinking”
Same, my family weren’t soda drinkers.
It’s hard to know what’s actually owned by Coca-Cola.
Not too hard
There’s a lot more because Coca Cola owns brands that only operate within a single national market.
Is there an app for that?
A RECOMMENDATION: TURN UPSIDE DOWN IF IT’S A BAD PRODUCT.
Regional
No Thanks (Apple store) - Android store for Palestine stuff. Collects no data at all. This is the app I would first recommend. Scan product, see result.Buy Beaver - Canadian-focused initiative. Lets you pick countries to support. Collects mail address and device ID, but nothing more.
Detrumpez Vous - focused on finding whether a product is American or not.
Supranational (European)
Buy From EU - find European alternatives. Not necessarily scanning, but useful. Collects mail/sms, but that’s it.Buy European AI - lets you take a picture of the product, find European alternatives & that of allies. Anonymously collects rough location & photo (the latter makes sense though).
General
There’s Boycat, also as app, which is user-friendly, but their privacy policy states your data may be stored outside of your legal jurisdiction.Depends where you are from, but the App Store and buy Canadian turned up this. There were several of them
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/maple-scan-buy-canadian/id6741467577
Coke probably is. Not sure what else
I’ve stopped buying Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Plenty of locals make similar products.
Neither of those companies left Russian market even though they seemed to promise to do that. That should’ve been enough reason to avoid them.
Also, if it’s a cold beverage with coffeine you want, making your own cold brew tea is trivial: just put some tea into a container and put it in the fridge for 12-24 hours. Then remove the tea leaves and consume within 3 days. Bagged tea doesn’t taste as good but is obviously easier to filter out.
Most any cold, nonalcoholic drink at a restaurant is going to be owned by Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Even the iced tea. Coke and Pepsi have started disguising their soda fountains with “bespoke” brands that use real sugar. For example, Stubborn Soda is owned by Pepsi. Coke recently bought Topo Chico. Pepsi owns “Bubly” and bought out Soda Stream. Chances are you are drinking a Coke or Pepsi product without realizing it.
Snapple group in the US owns Keurig and Dr Pepper, so I guess you could drink that or 7-up if you wanted to avoid Coke or Pepsi.
Even the iced tea.
Yeah, that’s why I suggested making it yourself instead. Besides, those shop iced teas almost always have a shitload of sugar.
Agree. It is not that difficult to make correct moves. Coop Trading cola (Made by Olvi in Finland) and Nocco from Sweden are the ones my boys have to be satisfied with (previously Coca-Cola and Monster)
Hmm I gotta try Coop cola, the orange is good. A lot of the cheap brand colas are just awful IMO
I just removed an empty Coop cola and a Nocco off my desk. Can confirm they are superior
Make Tap Water Great Again
Unfortunately, my local and popular soft drink company had been bought by Coca Cola years ago. They made the drink taste bad now, which is literal enshitiffication. Not much for any remaining local alternatives to buy.
Having this issue also, how not buy soft drink stands which are either owned by coca cola or PepsiCo is not as simple as it sounds
And if you’re making your own, don’t get a SodaStream because the factories are in occupied/stolen land in Palestine. DrinkMate is a better machine anyways.
They made the drink taste bad now, which is literal enshittification.
I mostly drink some local store branded Cola that’s made by company from my country. It’s cheap as fuck and actually tastes better than any big brand cola.
Not sure if it’s the same, Hofer (Aldi?) has “River Cola” in my country. It’s not terrible, but it has a mildly watery taste which is not my favorite when I need a strong sugary fix hehe. The one from local store chain, they really nailed the taste. It’s not zero variant, but they use some sweeteners and regular sugar and they got the balance just right. And it’s like 1/4th of the Coca Cola price or something. I haven’t got one from Lidl recently enough to remember how it tastes and same goes for one from Italian Eurospin.
Aldi here in Benelux has the “River” brand. That is what we buy.
Agrum soda is big here (grapefruit flavor).
They have very good tasting zero sugar drinks:
- Ice Tea (uncarbonated, this is our absolute staple)
- Cola
- Agrumes
Then they have sugar versions of
- Tonic
- Green Tea (Lipton green knockoff)
- Bitter lemon
- Cola
- Lemon Lime
- 4 lemons
- agrumes
- orange (fanta)
Quite the range, massively cheaper per liter than name brands, and small cans except for the ice tea to help not drink too much.
I wonder why fizzy sugary drink is now a necessity to drink.
I don’t see the same conversation around chocolate milk or pineapple juice.
People in the comments need to take a step back.
I don’t drink cola outside of parties where I drink it with (cheap) whisky (I wouldn’t ruin good whisky with cola), which I admit is still very bad for health, but at least not frequent
The only other time I’m glad to have some cola is when I have “stomache troubles” 🚽
The default drink used to be fizzy fermented grain or fruit.
It’s honestly not anything new to not be drinking water just the people doing it are less drunk now.
This could be largely because Pepsi has been expanding in the Russia and many are boycotting it for that. So, if the combined market share of those has risen, then we are not doing so badly :)
But isn’t Pepsi only going there since coke never left and faced no consequences
Coca-Cola suspended it’s business in Russia in 2022. Pepsi never left Russia.
After Jimmycakes’ comment I checked leaverussia.kse.org for Coca-cola and Pepsi as “barcodes”, and it turns out that Coca-Cola still produces beverages with some local brand names that probably don’t get recognized as inostranets by Russians.
And Pepsi has been expanding to fill the gap left by Coca-Cola company.
Do better Europeans. Coke snitched on their own workers to ICE.
As European, I don’t really that much care about ICE. But I do care about doing business with a certain non-ambiguously fascist eastern neighbor.
Typical european not caring about suffering of people elsewhere since your fortunes come from people suffering elsewhere 🥱
