My cola
& the environment

• What is the Cola Made Of?
• What is the Can Made Of?
• What is the Effect on the Environment?
• What Should I Do?

I'm feeling thirsty, so I pick up a can of cola, I open it and I drink...

What is the Cola Made Of?

• 90% water
• corn syrup
• citric acid
• flavour concentrate (a secret ingredient including caffeine)
• carbon dioxide.

CORN SYRUP is very sweet and is added to drinks to make them sweet.

CAFFEINE: a substance that is in many drinks (such as coffee) that makes you feel more awake and active.

CARBON DIOXIDE = CO2. The gas that makes the bubbles in cola.

The Can Itself

The aluminium can cost much more to make than the cola.

The can weighs 15 grammes: only 5 grammes came from recycled aluminium.

The other 10 grammes were made from 40 grammes of bauxite ore. This was strip-mined in the Australian 'outback'. The bauxite was crushed, washed, dried, made into a powder, mixed with caustic soda and roasted with calcium oxide. This process produced aluminium oxide.

BAUXITE ORE: the soft rock that aluminium is made from.

STRIP-MINING: getting ore from the surface of the ground.

The aluminium oxide was sent, in a Korean ship, to a smelter in Washington state.

Here, the aluminium oxide was dissolved in 'baths '. A huge amount of electricity - 100,000-amps - was used to separate the oxygen atoms from the aluminium.

Small amounts of perfluorocarbons (PFCs) escaped from the smelter. PFCs are greenhouse gases that trap thousands of times more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide.

After the aluminium had been pressed into flat sheets, it was sent to another factory where high-powered machinery made it into a can.

At the bottling factory, machines filled the can with near freezing soda and sealed on the top.

SMELTER: a factory where rock is heated to get metal.

The Effect on the Environment:

Making aluminium from ore is one of the most damaging processes for the world's climate. It uses so much energy that aluminium is sometimes called 'congealed electricity' .

CONGEAL: If something congeals, it dries and becomes solid.
Aluminium is called 'CONGEALED ELECTRICITY' because it takes so much electricity to make aluminium that you can think of it as being made of 'solid' electricity.

What should I do?

• I should buy drinks in refillable bottles. Even if the cans are 90% recycled, refillable bottles use much less energy.
• If I must buy cans, I should recycle them.
• Best of all, I could remember that water is the best thirst-quencher!

A REFILLABLE BOTTLE can be used more than once by filling it up again.

THIRST QUENCHER: A drink that is very refreshing and takes away your thirst.