Richard Girard of the Polaris Institute spoke about why Coke was receiving Polaris's Corporate Greenwashing Award:

"On behalf of the Corporate Greenwashing Award Selection Committee, I would like to present The Coca-Cola Company with the first ever corporate Greenwashing Award.

"This award is presented to corporations that have pushed revenue and profits higher while putting millions of dollars into covering up environmentally and socially damaging practices using corporate social responsibility projects.

"There are two reasons why we chose Coke for this year's award:

"# 1) Chairman Isdell's performance as the co-chair of this year's World Economic Forum where he effectively polished the company's perceived image as a good corporate citizen.

"At the meeting's opening press conference, Chairman Isdell announced that the company has been reducing water usage by approximately 4 percent annually in order to 'reduce the footprint'.

"The genius of this statement is that nobody really knows how much water Coke and its bottlers are actually using!

"Mr. Isdell's statement, made without citing any evidence, does not hold the company to any kind of reduction quota but helps clean the company's image as a heavy water user.

"Your work at the World Economic Forum is exactly the kind of high profile greenwashing that we are looking for from potential recipients of this award.

"With this kind of PR Coke can become - as they say they want to be - 'best-in-class at water management', without actually doing anything about changing the production process of its bottlers!

"#2) We also want to highlight what the Wall Street Journal calls, Coke's 'clean water kick in the developing world', as another major reason Coke beat out other corporations for this year's award.

"These projects - which are often undertaken in partnership with international institutions - are effective medicine for Coke's PR water headache.

"They give the company very effective ammunition to respond to its critics at events like the AGM, don't hold Coke accountable for its environmentally damaging production process.

"By not actually altering production, growth in revenue is guaranteed meanwhile the company's destructive image is washed away.

"From these two examples we were able to select The Coca-Cola Company as the company that has worked the hardest this year to fool the public that it is an upstanding corporate citizen."