Manufactures and distributes home carbonation devices and soft drink flavoring. The company is also the Israeli distributor of Brita water filtering pitchers.The main plant of the company is located in the industrial zone of Mishor Edomim, which is an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.To read the full report about SodaStream as a case study of settlement production click here.
In September 2015, SodaStream closed its factory located in an Israeli settlement on the occupied West Bank and moved manufacturing inside the 1967 borders. The company's relocation to the Negev (Naqab) has also come under scrutiny, as the new area was confiscated in the 1950's by the Israeli government from Palestinian Bedouins, who continue to face severe legal and economic discrimination and the threat of further displacement to this day.
SodaStream manufactures and distributes home beverage carbonating devices and flavorings for soft drinks.
The main plant of the company was located in the industrial zone of Mishor Edomim, which is an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Despite this the company has mislabeled its products as "Made in Israel".
The Mishor Edomim industrial zone directly serves the nearby settlement of Ma'ale Adumim as a source of revenue and employment, where the settlement receives SodaStream’s municipal taxes payments. The particularly strategic location of the settlement and its industrial zone strengthens Israeli control over the West Bank by ensuring continuous Israeli control between the settlements of East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley.
SodaStream has enjoyed the structural advantages of production in Israeli settlements, including: low rent, special tax incentives, lax enforcement of environmental and labor protection laws. It has also relied heavily on the exploitative nature of employment under occupation.
According to Kav LaOved (an NGO committed to protecting labor rights), between 2008-2010 the workers in the SodaStream factory suffered from harsh working conditions, low wages, and 'revolving door' employment policies. In April 2008, SodaStream fired a group of 17 Palestinian workers, who protested their work conditions and low wages. Following the publication of the story in the Swedish press and the intervention of Kav LaOved, they were rehired with better conditions, dismissed for the second time in 2010, and rehired again. However, two leaders of this struggle lost their jobs permanently.
In response to growing public criticism, the company repeatedly claimed to be an ethical employer and the sole provider of income for its Palestinian workers and their families.
Despite SodaStream’s statement that all workers "work side by side with equal wages, equal benefits and equal opportunities", the discriminatory and exploitative working conditions in the company's facilities continue. On July 2014, SodaStream fired 60 Palestinian workers, who complained about receiving insufficient food to break the Ramadan fast. On September 2014, Bedouin women employees at SodaStream’s new factory in the Negev (within Israel proper) complained that they are required to toil 12-hour shifts.
In October 2014, the company published a statement on a future withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories and the relocation of its production lines to a new factory in Lehavim, Israel. Still, for the moment, SodaStream continues to operate in the settlement industrial zone of Mishor Edomim.
To read the full report about SodaStream as a case study of settlement production click here.
- On May 23, 2018, the student senate at the University of Oregon passed a resolution to divest from companies including the Strauss Group, the Osem Group, Hewlett-Packard Company, Ahava, General Electric, Eden Springs, Motorola, G4S, Elbit Systems. The resolution also prohibited the purchase of products from Sabra, Tribe, Sodastream, and the companies listed above.
- In 2014, the University of New Mexico’s Graduate and Professional Student Association voted to divest from Sodastream because it “operates its main manufacturing plant in the illegal settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, in the West Bank.”
- Loyola University in Chicago passed a 2014 divestment resolution affirming that Sodastream “play[s] active roles in the human rights abuses committed by the Israeli Government.”
- Oberlin College’s student government passed a 2013 resolution against Sodastream, citing the location of Sodastream’s factory as “on land confiscated from its Palestinian owners by the Israeli military.”
- In November of 2012, the Associated Students at the UC Irvine voted unanimously to divest from Sodastream because it “operates its main manufacturing plant in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank.”