Can a company grow and shrink at the same time?

That's what The Coca-Cola Co. is trying to do. Like every big company, Coca-Cola wants to grow its revenues and profits. It also wants to reduce its environmental footprint. Is this possible?

The answer is probably not, at least not right now.

That's not because Coke isn't trying. Indeed, few companies take environmental issues more seriously than Coca-Cola. I'm an admirer of the company's chairman, Neville Isdell, and its sustainability guru, Jeff Seabright. (See Coke: The Green Thing at fortune.com and this blog post.) The trouble is that, at least for the moment, the more stuff that Coke sells, the more it is likely to emit, pollute and consume natural resources.

That, in any event, is my takeaway from last week's announcement from Coca-Cola and the World Wildlife Fund that they are extending a partnership announced last year and setting new targets aimed at reducing water usage and greenhouse gas emissions throughout Coke's sprawling, global system. Coke beverages – its $1 billion brands include Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Coca-Cola Zero, vitaminwater, Powerade, Minute Maid and Georgia Coffee (a coffee-flavored drink sold in in Asia) — are sold in more than 200 countries.

As you may know, Coke products are produced and distributed by dozens independent bottlers, so the seemingly simple task of tracking the system's global environmental footprint isn't simple at all. Getting all those bottlers to line up behind promises to use resources more efficiently can't be easy, either.

Seen in that light, Coke's progress to date and its new targets deserve praise. The company improved its water efficiency by 20% from 2002 to 2007, and it aims to use water even more efficiently by 2012. "Water is at the core of what we do," Seabright says. Its energy use ratio, another efficiency measure, improved by 19% between 2002 and 2007. These efficiency measures, in essence, means that Coke is using a lot less water and a lot less energy and emitting significantly fewer greenhouse gases per unit of product sold. That's no small accomplishment, but you need to understand that we are talking about eco-efficiency here.

In absolute terms, Coca-Cola cut its water usage by 2% between 2002 and 2007, but it expects to use more water in 2012 than it does now because its business is growing, particularly outside of the U.S. Similarly, Coca-Cola's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions actually grew between 2002 and 2007. Going forward, it aims to keep emissions from its manufacturing operations flat between its baseline year of 2004 and 2015. (That's just manufacturing. The company is working separately on its refrigeration, packaging and transportation, which aren't part of the targets announced today.)