It doesn't only look beautiful, and it would make Jon Ive and Steve Jobs wet, but this naked Coca-Cola can would help save energy while reducing air and water pollution. Would it really make a difference? Let's do some math:
I assume the consumption only increases through time, but let's take the daily 2007 numbers from Global INForM Cases Sales database: The total number of Coca-Cola cans sold per worldwide is 67,873,309. Diet Coke and Coke Zero sold 35,387,241, while My Coke sold 103,260,550. Yes, that's all per day.
So using only classic Coca-Cola's daily sales figures, that means 24,773,757,785 are sold every year. Twenty-four billion cans. That is indeed a lot of paint and paint removal products. Because this doesn't only affect the production. It also affects the recycling process, eliminating one step:
The naked can help to reduce air and water pollution occurred in its coloring process. It also reduces energy and effort to separate toxic color paint from aluminum in recycling process. Huge amount of energy and paint required to manufacture colored cans will be saved. Instead of toxic paint, manufacturers process aluminum with a pressing machine that indicates brand identity on surface.
Sounds good to me, and it even looks better if you take into account all kinds of Coke. That brings up the number to 75,380,201,500 cans. I don't know how much paint that represents, but I'm guessing quite a few thousand tons. [7760 via Likecool, Sales info from Let's Get Together]