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(from another thread on here...)
I for one (or Hemlock) will never be buying Innocent anything, ever again - now they've sold out to Coca Cola :(
I don't care if they're vegan, organic or the most ethically produced product on the planet
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7986901.stm
A £30 Million stake in the company is hardly small is it?
Do these people have any idea what they're getting into bed with? Some people are so naive!! :mad:
Maybe a name change from Innocent is in order, to something like 'Not Quite As Innocent As We Used To Be'?;)
I have an idea...
Anyone read the book – Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola by Mark Thomas?
Reading it last year put me off Coke for life.
I would like to send them a copy (and will be doing shortly) - as I cannot understand how they can be so stupid. Anyone care to join me? If enough people bombard them with copies of this book, it might make someone in the company think.
Who knows? It might make a difference...
Hi Corum
I'm quite sure that Innocent already 'know' about Coca-Cola and would come out with some bullsh*t like 'We've done it to try to influence Coca-Cola in a positive, ethical way'.
My feeling is that for most companies, times are hard in the current economic climate and after all £30m is £30m. The customers that Innocent lose through the link with Coca-Cola will probably be more than made up for by the number they will gain. I used to drink Innocent smoothies but not any more.
I suggest you hold on to your book for the moment, then pass it on to the first simple soul who comes onto this thread trying to tell us how wonderful Coca-Cola are blah blah blah. :mad:
I never could stomach the taste of Cola or Pepsi for that matter. Especially as Cola is used to clean the blood off Tar-Mac after car crashes. The ingreidents used today are a far cry from the original ingredients that gave them their names. I've lnown people clean copper with Cola, so imagine what it does to your stomach?! Their ethics are Pants, too!
As for Inocent smoothies, they're OK, but nothing to write home about. Buying the fruit and making the smoothies myself is cheaper and tastier!
I don't buy from either company and never will!
It seems like only yesterday some of us were getting upset with them for allowing their products to be sold in McDonalds: http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14873
Call me a luddite but I don't see the point of smoothies, except for persuading reluctant children to consume fruit. I'd rather just eat fruit. (So that will save me the trouble of boycotting them :D )
Fair play to you. We need more people like you.Quote:
1gentlemaorispirit
Mega-corporations trying to fluffy-up their image! As if. If you have money, find out whose pockets it goes into before you spend it. You never know what you're supporting...
I am unsure how i could live my life with the family that i have now without handing over my money to companies whose ethics (or lack of them) upset me, so i must be a hypocrite.
I have an oil fired which gives me heat and hot water, and i use electricity, presumably nuclear powered.
I have to run a car due to the lack of reliable public transport where i live and the nature of my husband's disabilities.
I shop in Tesco as it's the one and only place where i can get all the shopping that i need at an affordable cost for my current budget.
I also own computers (made from largely unrecyclable parts, bought from largely unethical companies, running off electricity) and televisions, which i use daily.
I bought a share in my house from the local housing association, who pay staff who probably all eat meat, same for the local building firm who built the house.
I wash my clothes with detergent which probably adds to the general water pollution, same with the shower gel that i use.
I also use a large and unethical bank chain.
I'm afraid i do know where my money goes, and it does prick my conscience, but at the end of the day i choose to spare my mental health which in the past has suffered from the level of anxiety i placed upon it.
That's a great, honest answer, cobweb.
You're not that much different from millions of others in terms of 'hypocrisy'.
My answer would be to tackle one thing at a time: your list is so long (and probably incomplete) that it would get any self-respecting ethical vegan down! I have/had the same problem so I made a list and crikey what a list. I'm whittling it down bit by bit.
For instance, start by switching to a supplier of 'green' electricity (check here for a start) and you can successfully cross something off that list. Do something like that say, every month, and in a couple of years you would have a much shorter list.
What do you think?
Every little helps! :D
Pretty much everyone has to compromise on some ethical beliefs in their lives. You just have do as much as is reasonable/viable for you and your circumstances and encourage others to do the same.
That's it exactly - but never forget those compromises; try to be pro-active in eliminating them, say by writing/talking to the causers of the compromises.Quote:
Charlotte
Otherwise yes, Charlotte, lead by example!
That's not actually true. I expect they use water for that. But that doesn't make water bad to drink.Quote:
1gentlemaorispirit
It is a shame that Innocent have done this, but then I never buy their stuff anyway as it is overpriced, so I can't really moan about it.
[QUOTE=Pob;565035]That's not actually true. I expect they use water for
The ethical issues mentioned earlier are already being discussed in the 'where does your money go thread'
I've worked with the Police for 16 years and have seen Cola used to clean blood of the roads.Quote:
Pob
Quote:
DavidT
Yeah but i'm not too bothered i'm afraid :o.
I used to be absolutely fastidious about these things, i have literally lived without mod cons, but now i feel i have enough worry in my life :satisfied:.
I got to the point where i though why the hell should i make myself ill with anxiety when everyone else (or most people) don't even bother to do something as simple as recycling? :confused:.
I won't change my energy supplier because the one i'm with gives me 20% off my bills due to my situation, and the other things are pretty much unavoidable as far as i can see. I'm vegan because i detest cruelty to animals and that is my driving force. I honestly don't believe that me not eating animals makes a huge difference to the death industry (unfortunately) but i don't see animals as food/clothes/entertainment. In other words i'm not really making a stand by voting with my money, i'm just consuming the products i see as fit for their purpose.
You shouldn't, cw!Quote:
cobweb
I suspect you and probably most people here are doing what they can to be "ethical consumers", however they interpret that, but some things are more practical for some people than others - and we don't always know how other people are fixed.
I feel it's fine to raise awareness of these issues, but not to make other people feel bad about what they are and aren't doing, or try to impose one's own values on other people.
Speaking from strictly personal experience, my life has been way cheaper since starting to really 'bother'. Honest, we live so cheaply that my wife has been able to give up work and now grows a lot of our own food, making our life even cheaper.Quote:
cobweb
This is not what the powers that be want to hear!
Anyway, if other people can't be bothered to recycle, for instance, I just get on with it without preaching and I am setting a good example, which others can look up to or not.
Exactly!Quote:
harpy
DavidT i know you mean well, and i know what you're saying because i have lived more closely to the way you do, (before i was married), i guess all i am saying is that i feel its not possible or practical for me right now, and maybe i just don't want it badly enough :o.
I used to grow veg (til quite recently) but i don't find it easy in Orkney and, i have to be honest, i found it wasn't an awful lot cheaper by the time i had paid for organic seeds (some of which never grew), compost, etc. I also made my own compost which attracted rats into our garden. I just felt i had to draw my own line so i drew it at being vegan and just reducing the amount of unnecessary products i purchased.
I do buy coca cola though because it seems to head off my migraines if i drink it soon enough so i'd rather buy that than buy Migraleve :(.
I heard an interview with them yesterday on Radio 4 and they were asked - and I paraphrase here as I can't recall the exact wording - '"what if Coca-Cola got a 51% share in the company, would it affect their ethical policy?", their reply was - and I paraphrase here again - "we'll see". That just about summed it all up for me. Bye bye ethical values. Bye bye Innocent.
At first, I thought you meant Coca-Cola's ethical policy! I thought I was going mad.Quote:
vegcurry
Anyway, that is a surprisingly honest answer: it means 'yes' but using that word would jeopardise the deal.
I have owned and run 2 businesses, unfortunately i can say from experience that ethics often = no profit, which even more often spells D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R, crap though that is.
i'm shocked and really saddened. i genuinely loved Innocent smoothies and they're salad pots are quite scrummy too. :(
Now's the time to find an ethical replacement. That'll show 'em!Quote:
Agatha
Gaia forgive me that I might appear to be endorsing this take over in even a tiny way but are Coca-Cola (inadvertently) doing their bit for entrepreneurialism?
Hopefully, there will be outraged people out there who are now thinking about setting up their own ethical smoothie business.
Green & Blacks selling out to Cadburys
Bob Dylan to Starbucks
Pret a Manger to McDonalds
and now Innocent to Coca Cola.
Bit of a worrying trend here?
:eek::eek::eek:
^ and on the non food side, Body Shop to l'oreal
money is king
Uri Geller from Vegan Society (UK) patron, to er...VS (UK) non-patron, (for promoting cows milk).
:mad::eek::(
I wrote to innocent, I don't think they're going to reply to my second reply, here's what has been said (the link is to my blog where I published it all):
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?f...ogId=481723303
It's not all exactly, well written, and I probably should have read it back to myself before sending it, and still haven't been bothered enough to do so, but there we go.
Did anyone read the Sky News online debate about this? This comment cracked me up...
[Comment From Unimpressed Face]
Sorry guys - I was just about to forgive you for flirting outrageously with McDonalds since 2007, but getting into bed with Coca-Cola has lost you a customer for good this time. This practice of allowing multinational capitalist corporations hellbent on globalisation to take a share in your environmentally and ethically-mindful, practically socialist "do no evil" business, is much more than embarassing - it is the worst kind of selling out there is. The Innocent/Coca-Cola deal is like when "against animal testing" Body Shop sold to "we love to shave dogs and put lipstick on their little faces" L'Oreal... or when Pret-A-Manger sold a 33% stake in their ethical sandwich business to Mc-bloody-Donalds. You can get teabagged if you think I'm buying anything from you ever again. I have followed your business with a great deal of interest since your beginnings (I especially enjoyed your contribution to the "How They Started" book, for example) and had been entirely supportive of your products and what you stood for, but now you leave me with no other choice than to make a trip to "Fruit Towers" in order to take a dump on your doorstep and set fire to it; the only way I can truly demonstrate how I feel about your complete moral U-turn.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-...=searchresults
Excellent!Quote:
loveganism
I buy innocent smoothies a lot. They are cheaper than making your own, don't have any nasty bits in and I like to support ethical companies. I even have their recipe books. Wont bother now that coca cola are involved. Even though they don't fully own the company 30% is a large amount and will give them a lot of power and share of the profits.
I don't like it when companies like innocent sell out. They were fast growing and profitable. It is really just greed to want to get even more £££ to spend on expanding even quicker. When things like this happen though, new companies come up to fill the place.. Like when Body Shop sold out and stopped giving a crap about anything, Lush became more popular..
Coke won't get any direct profit allegedly. All the money will go straight back into the company, how long that will last I don't know.Quote:
f2097
At the very least it gives coke an ethics wash which is pretty bad, but their profits are indirect from this for now. Cokes all about its image and advertising. I think they don't even own any of the plantations that make the coca cola and fanta, but they probably own the water plantations.
you could try submitting a question about this to their AGM, although whether they'll actually read them out is another matter.
http://www.clicktools.com/dashboard/survey/response.jsp
I'm getting a 'bad url' response to the above link.Quote:
Gorilla
sorry, i pasted the web address from an email, and i guess that only works if you link directly from the email.
here's the AGM info: http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/AGM/
Shockingly, Innocent Smoothies may not be vegan anyway!
From http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/things_we_make/faq/#18
Haven't yet worked out how I feel about this. Having just bought 5 cartons, as well...Quote:
Are your products suitable for vegans?
Smoothies - We're afraid as we can't guarantee that our drinks are shellac free, due to the small chance that tiny amounts of shellac do make it into our drinks, we can't class our drinks as being suitable for vegans. Thickies - no (they contain dairy produce and honey).
Certainly seems to undermine their "nothing but fruit" claim.
Aww....Innocent sold out to Coca-Cola? I really got hooked on the stuff when I was in London... :(...but I can't support a company that uses hitmen to clamp down on unions in Columbia.
Just checked their site, and they have apparantly been labelling the meal pots for a while, which I didn't realise (they also changed recipes to make them vegan; removing the honey)
http://innocentdrinks.typepad.com/in...-go-vegan.html