WHY WE ARE ALL FEELING OVERWHELMED AND WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH MEXICAN COKE?

Mexican Coke for sale on Amazon

Something very interesting is happening right now. While it feels like time is speeding up, it is actually an illusion.

Thanks to the Tech industry, we are fed information non-stop. In less than 3 hours I have seen devastating floods in Hawaii, babies starving in Palestine, warnings about the collective deterioration of our health from climate change and a video alert of a woman being randomly punched in my neighborhood.

It isn’t even noon yet and my nervous system is shot.

I am old enough to remember having to go to the library to do research and young enough to still be working; now using what tech offers me. From emails to apps to social media to news alerts, we receive everything in real time. Before 1995, we just had the radio or TV for emergency alerts; we actually waited hours, even days, for the paper or newscast to sort through the info and feed it to us.

Now we are bombarded every second. Combined with demanding, non-stop schedules that we start as soon as our parents can enroll us in soccer or tutoring, we are a vice fueled, anti-depressant-taking society that is crumbling under all the pressure. I had to shake my head when my friend told me of an acquaintance who is taking numerous medications just to keep up with her workload.

It is too much, and we are unable to process it all.

We all want to feel safe; it is in our DNA. We watch the horrifying videos on repeat, in a primal instinct to look out for danger and protect ourselves. And tech, the media and corporations know this.

Everything we see now thrives in the extreme and we are witnessing a human population very overwhelmed by it all.

What does this have to do with Mexican Coke?

Good question. Yesterday, I was sent a video from Guatemala showing a river filled with plastic bottles. Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, Boyan Slat, was there with his nets cleaning it up. He exclaimed he had never seen anything quite like this. The amount of plastic even overwhelmed him. Then the day before an IG friend DMd that in Mexico everything is refilled in glass with a refundable deposit. So of course I wondered if Mexico can do this, why can’t we do this everywhere? What is the hold up?

Down the rabbit hole I went. And here is what I found.

There are many reasons Mexican Coke is different, but it isn’t because their government cares more about its people and its environment.

It’s about money.

First the bottle. Refillable glass bottles were introduced in Latin America for a different eco not ecology, but economics.

It takes far more effort and money to reuse a bottle. Using Mexico as an example, the coke is purchased (and often drank right there or poured into a plastic bag (it’s a thing) to get the bottle deposit back), returned to the store owner, then picked up by the bottle washer and filler contracted by Coca Cola; washed, sanitized and refilled and then put back to market again. Interestingly this can and is done with plastic bottles too. They are much thicker and also have less re-use averaging 35x vs 50x with glass.

The bottle deposit in Mexico is almost 50% of the purchase price, or half the total cost. In the few states in the US that have bottle deposits, it averages 2.5% of the total cost.

A big difference.

Reusables are prominent in countries that are not considered developed (according to the World Bank) when looking at income per capita. It is a way of marketing to those with less income. Have a Coke and get half your money back, or something like that. And then they get addicted.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi may spin the reusable facts in these countries, but don’t be fooled. They are not developing more reusable bottles, but simply using their current numbers for marketing.

Single use plastic by Coca-Cola is on the rise, not the decline.

Like Coca-Cola’s Mexican coke, social media and its memes are simply an attempt to grab your attention and make money. That’s it. There are no instant solutions or answers. And behind every single triggering meme is a VERY LONG history of fuckery, by a corporation or a governing leader or the entire construct.

Social media and Mexican Coke are the same.

They both hide the truth of what they are.

Before I go, I want to share the other myth about Mexican Coke, and that is that it is healthier - a purer recipe.

In Mexico, Coke is sweetened with cane sugar, not corn syrup.

Could it be the Mexican government doesn’t want processed sugars poisoning their peoples? Wouldn’t that be great.

No. The reason Mexican Coke has real sugar is because Mexico is one of the largest growers of sugar cane. Coca-Cola wanted to use corn syrup (the US is one of the largest manufacturers of that) and Mexico wanted to use the sugar they grow.  The WTO (another questionable organization to keep those in power in place) disagreed and said Coke can use corn syrup, so in its defense in 1997, Mexico put a very high tariff on corn syrup, making it financially impossible for Coca-Cola to use it in the Coke. 

Viva la Sugar Cane Farmers?

No again.  Mexico practices Hacienda farming – basically a form of colonial farming that is not favorable to the farmers, but extremely beneficial to the landowner.

But yet we still believe the meme made in 5 minutes with no research or thought - because it is fast and packaged well - and we humans thrive on instant gratification.

Social media would have us believe the plastic in the rivers of Guatemala are filled with plastic because the Guatemalans dump their trash in the river purposely (it is actually because their government has not invested in the infrastructure), and Mexican Coke is in bottles because Mexico thinks it tastes better and they are leading the world in renewable packaging.

It is an endless hamster wheel of blame and despair, take another sip, another pill, because you can’t do anything about it.

Money, power and control is almost always the reason I have found.

Coca-Cola doesn’t use reusable bottles for the most part and has increased their single use production because reusables cost more, and humans are lazy and don’t want to return them. Tech doesn’t want to give you solutions, because solutions make less money and don’t keep you addicted.

Coca-Cola could absolutely go back to refillable, but it would require a big investment and unfortunately no corporations want to make less money for the greater good.

It is all about control of a market, of you, of me, of our children to make them money and/or to keep them in power.

Before you pop another pill, take another drag, sip another glass, swipe another screen, and buy a coke, remind yourself you have a choice to not do that. You can get off the hamster wheel they have created for each of us - called an algorithm.

We can’t let their greed take away our mental health, while we still have a choice.

Be well –

Christine