Citizen Coke: an Environmental and Political History of the Coca-Cola Company
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Citizen Coke: An Environmental and Political History of the Coca-Cola Company /- BartowJerome Elmore Charlottesville, Virginia B.A., DartmouthCollege, 2004 M.A., University of Virginia, 2007 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Corcoran Departmentof History University of Virginia May,2012 © Copyright by Bartow Jerome Elmore All Rights Reserved May 2012 11 Abstract Blending business, environmental, cultural, and political history, this manuscript on the commercial ascendancy of the Coca-Cola Company addresses a simple question: how did a patent medicine invented in an Atlanta pharmacy in 1886 acquire the natural resources it needed to become available in retail outlets all over the globe? Though often not treated by scholars as such, mass-marketing enterprises like Coca-Cola are ultimately extractive industries requiring prodigious amounts of natural resources to achieve the retail ubiquity that made them famous. Thus, reducing the cost of ingredients-including packaging-is a primary concern of these enterprises, one that structures corporate organization in ways historians have not fullyexplored. Restoring the connection between Coca-Cola and the ecosystems it inhabited, this study places natural resource acquisition at the heart of a narrative about the construction of a political economy that nurtured the growth of low-value consumer goods businesses in the twentieth century. This study argues that vertical integration was not the hallmark of big business growth in the twentieth century. It contends that insulation fromthe risky and often unprofitable business of mining natural resources from provider communities around the world allowed many companies to gain the global market popularity that they did in the twentieth century. This is what made certain profitable companies more resilient than others as they transitioned fromthe Progressive Era to the globalized economy of the late-twentieth century. With cheap natural resources and limited front-end investments in production systems, Coca-Cola was able to place its products on retail shelves all across the globe, making it one of the most widely available and profitable consumer items in human history. 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements . .1v . Prologue: The Creation Myth of Citizen Coke . .... .... .1 . Introduction....................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Water Public Water for Sale: Coca-Cola and the Problems of Corporate Water Stewardship in the Twentieth Century......................................... 29 Chapter 2: Sugar Citizen Cane: Building the World's Largest Corporate Sugar Empire..... 83 Chapter 3: Natural Flavors - Coca Cocaine-Cola ...................................................................... 131 Chapter 4: Caffeine "Wealth fromWaste": Coca-Cola and the Global Caffeine Industry, 1886-2010 ........................................................................... 170 Chapter 5: Packaging Coca-Cola, The American Beverage Industry, and the Development of Curbside Recycling Programs in the United States, 1950-2000 ......... 210 Chapter 6: High-Fructose Com Syrup From Silos to Stomachs: America's Sweet Excesses Become Visible ..... 241 Conclusion.................................................. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 264 Bibliography ....................................................................... 270 Acknowledgements iv Acknowledgements Many people played a critical role in helping me produce this dissertation. I am deeply indebted to my graduate committee who not only provided sound advice and chapter edits throughout the research and writing process, but also offered much needed encouragement when this global history became a bit much to bear. Ed Ayers was instrumental in my graduate career, taking a chance on me back in the fall of 2006 when I was not sure I could hack it as an American historian. Ed led by example and showed me what it meant to be a public scholar. He taught how the historian's craft could be used to better the world in which we live. I am eternally grateful to him for sticking with me and seeing me through this project. Grace Hale signed on to work with me in my second year of graduate school, at a time when her office was flooded with graduate students. She found time for me and dedicated hours to line-by-line editing of chapters. My dissertation was immeasurably enhanced due to her persistent demands that I refine and clarify arguments in every section of the dissertation. In the same vein, Ed Russell was a dedicated mentor throughout the process and provided day-to-day advice on how to handle the challenges of graduate school. At conferences, I always say Ed changed my life because he introduced me to the subfield of environmental history that has become my professional passion ever since. Ed is truly a selfless mentor who dedicated countless hours teaching all his students lessons on professional development often absent in standard graduate school curriculum. Finally, I must thank Brian Balogh, who signed on to this project later in its development, but who nonetheless provided much needed advice on how this dissertation engaged with the American political development Acknowledgements v literature. Brian became not only a fantastic mentor but also a great friend, if at times a pesky and unbeatable opponent on the tennis courts. Several institutions at the University of Virginia and beyond helped provide critical funding without which I would have been unable to complete this project. From 2010 to 2012, I have had the pleasure of serving as the Sarah Shallenberger Brown Fellow in Environmental Writing at the University of Virginia's Brown Residential College, a fellowship that offers advanced graduate students funding to complete their dissertations while teaching courses on topics related to environmental history and literature. I am grateful to the Brown family for making this fellowship available and for giving me the opportunity to engage with such an amazing community of undergraduates at Brown College. I also received generous funding forthis project from the Bankard Fund forPolitical Economy established through gifts made by Merrill H. Bankard and his wifeGeorgia S. Bankard. The American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) contributed to this project in 2011 through the Hal Rothman Research Fellowship as did the Virginia Historical Society, which granted me the Betty Sams Christian Fellowship in Business History that same year. I am also indebted to the University of California, Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, which awarded me the Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellowship in Natural Resource Economics and Political Economy for the 2012-2013 academic year, which will allow me to revise this manuscript in the months ahead. Several faculty members and students in the Corcoran Department of History were instrumental in shaping my graduate career over the past six years and deserve special recognition. Though they never served in an official capacity as dissertation Acknowledgements vi advisers, I nonetheless am grateful for the training and support I received from Gary Gallagher, Peter Onuf, Christian McMillen, Mel Leffler, Claudrena Harold, Chuck McCurdy, Joe Kett, and Bernie Carlson. The Russell Environmental Lab Group reviewed numerous drafts of the dissertation as well as conference talks based on the project. I would especially like to thank Jamie Allison, Adam Dean, Tom Finger, Philip Herrington Laura Kolar, Stephen Macekura, Andrew McGee, and Katie Meyer for all their assistance. I would also like to thank Raffi Andonian, Brent Cebu!, Davi! Hill, Elizabeth Ladner, Kevin Lake, Tim Lovelace, Peter Luebke, and Loren Moulds for their scholarly support and comradeship. To Joya McMurray and her family and my friends in Charlottesville and elsewhere, I owe more than I can ever repay. To complete a dissertation, I am convinced you have to find time to laugh, scream, and cry with those you love. I will never forget my years in Charlottesville. They have been some of the best in my life. Thank you to the Charlottesville faithful, especially Paul Belonick, Katie Barletta, Ryan Bryant, Jerome Buescher, Doug Clarke, Ben Converse, Jon Foote, Emily Graham, Carlee Hawkins, Erica Hellen, Jeremiah Hovis, Kristen Kammann, Sanjay Kriplani, Andrew and Ashley Lockhart, Rhianna Laker, Zach Lucy, Micah McCallister, Bret Meyer, Tim Norwaczyk, Jon and Katie Overdevcst, Jesse Pappas, Beth Ratliff, Brian Renne, Joel Slezak, Nick Snavely, Justin Storbeck, Alexa Taylor, Jon Zadra, and the Zocalo team. And to my friends who have known me longer than they might want to admit, thank you for sticking with me through these years. Thank you Hemant Joshi, Kyle Hatridge, Kim Krajovic, Kristian Lau, Daniel Michalow, Kip Praissman, Matt Rahn, Brad Robinson, Erin Skinner, and Joe Thistle for being my friends for so long. Acknowledgements vii I reserve my greatest thanks for my parents, Jerome and Susan Elmore, and for my brother and sisters, Collins, Scott, and Lisa. Thank you for believing in me, for loving me, and giving me a chance to do this. This dissertation is dedicated to you. Prologue I Prologue: The Creation Myth of Citizen Coke I drink Coca-Cola. Growing up in Atlanta, the homeland of this famous soft drink, it was hard not to become addicted to the beverage. This was the product that helped make my town what it was. Few southern cities could claim a business enterprise as big and powerful