How do you make a can of Cola in England?
Taken from Lean Thinking by James Womack and Daniel Jones, (Free Press; 2003) as referenced in Natural Capitalism by Hawkins, Lovins and Lovins (Back Bay Books; 2000).
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Bauxite mined in Australia and reduced to aluminum oxide.
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Shipped to Sweden or Norway where electricity is cheap.
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Aluminum oxide reduced to aluminum metal ingots, each a quarter ton in weight.
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Ingots shipped to Sweden or Germany where they are rolled into coils of thin sheet.
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Coils shipped to England where they are punched and formed into cans.
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Cans washed, dried, painted, lacquered, flanged, sprayed inside with a protective coating, and inspected.
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Cans are shipped to bottler; they are washed and cleaned again.
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Cans are filled with the cola, made from syrup, phosphorus, caffeine and carbon dioxide gas.
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Sugar comes from beets in France.
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Phosphorus comes from Idaho and deep open-pit mines.
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The mining company uses the same amount of electricity as a city of 100,000 to reduce the phosphate to food-grade quality.
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Caffeine and syrup come from English chemical manufacturers.
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Cans are filled and sealed at 1500 cans per minute and stored in cardboard cartons that came from forest pulp from Sweden, Siberia or possibly British Columbia.
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Cans eventually end up in the supermarket and typically purchased within 3 days.
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Drinking a can of cola takes only a few minutes.
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In England 84% of all cans are discarded. Overall rate of aluminum waste is 88%.
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In the US enough aluminum is thrown away to replace the entire US commercial aircraft fleet every three months.