You have to hand it to Coca-Cola. Despite being the best-selling cola brand and one of the biggest companies in the world, they certainly don’t seem to rest on their laurels. Like a hungry up-and-coming business, they’re always coming up with new gimmicks in each of the 200 countries they operate in, whether it be personalized bottles in Japan or, like now in Vietnam, a set of functional caps which can transform your empty bottle into a water gun, pencil sharpener, night lights and more after you’re finished with it.

http://youtu.be/rWgCQgzJOU4

In the commercial for the Coca-Cola 2nd Lives campaign the company mentions that it is giving away 40,000 special bottle tops in Vietnam and then other places in Asia. The idea is to encourage people to reuse their bottles in both fun and useful ways.

There are sixteen different types of caps, such as:

1 – Water Guns

2 – Paint Brush

3 – Pencil Sharpener

4 – One of those spinny toy drum type things

5 – Spray Bottle

6 – Soap/Shampoo Dispenser

7 – Laundry Detergent Bottle

 8 – Weights

9 – Night lights

10 – Various Condiment Dispensers

11 – Bubble Blower

According to comments on the commercial’s YouTube page, viewers were polarized on the campaign. Several came out in support of the effort.

“Great initiative!”

“Where can I buy all these cool caps!?”

“If you’ve seen the amount of trash in Vietnam, you’ll agree this is a great idea, but holy god it feels like some Lenin/Marx-level propaganda.”

“Just had a coke, wish I had this for my bottle!”

“Hell yeah, water gun!”

Then there were those who felt this was a hollow attempt at greenwashing (exaggeration of a company’s environmental efforts). Others went further to claim that these caps simply create more of an environmental problem and Coca-Cola is doing more harm than good with its campaign.

“This is a wonderful method to encourage young children to drink more fizzy drinks and become overweight.”

“Oh no! More plastic pieces.”

“What if we never bought Coke in the first place? What if we only ever drank water?”

“Meanwhile in Australia, Coca-Cola opposed a bottle refund scheme to aid recycling.”

“The attachment caps contain more plastic than the bottle itself! This is just a good way to advertise, not to save the planet.”

The truth, as usual, is probably somewhere in the middle. Of course, this is largely a self-serving ad as evidenced by the fact that these bottles were all washed and reused yet their labels are in pristine condition with the logo constantly facing the camera. In fact, prepare to have your mind blown… OK, now scroll back up to picture number four of the drum toy. Notice anything odd?

That being said, it’s a nice thought and even if the critics are right and these plastic caps do more harm than good, it at the very least helps to promote the concepts of reusing bottles – regardless of the company that makes them – as a habit.

Either way, there’s one thing I think we can all take from this promotion and commercial and agree on: Watering plants with a spray bottle is a freakin’ riot!

Source: YouTube – Coca Cola via Kotaro (Japanese)