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ATLANTA, GA — At the Coca-Cola Co., it takes 2.36 liters of water to make a liter of product, a figure that has shrunk 13 percent since 2004.
Some regions are more efficient than others: In North America, for example, 1.71 liters of water are needed to make a liter of product, compared 3.23 liters in the Pacific region.
Globally, this puts the company on track to meet a 2020 goal of lowering its water use ratio by 20 percent. But when it comes to recycling the water the company uses in its operations, the company is falling short of a second goal of returning all water used in its manufacturing to the environment "at a level that supports aquatic life by the end of 2010."
"Significant challenges have had an impact on our system achieving 100 percent compliance," the company wrote in its 2009-2010 Sustainability Review released this week. "By the end of 2010, we estimate that 94 percent of system facilities will be compliant with our wastewater treatment standards. Work is under way at the remaining plants to be compliant by the end of 2011."
The Sustainability Review marks the seventh system-wide report from Coca-Cola and its 300-plus bottling partners. The report, which complies with the Global Reporting Initiative, relayed the highs and lows of a company that is both taking strides and facing challenges in lightening its environmental footprint.
An additional water-related goal involves getting its more than 900 bottling plants to comply with its water resource sustainability corporate standard and implementing protection plans by 2013. More than 90 percent of facilities completed water risk surveys in their regions in 2009.
In the realm of greenhouse gas emissions, Coca-Cola set a goal in 2008 that many companies aspire to: Grow its business without growing its emissions. The beverage giant also declared it would reduce its absolute emissions by 5 percent in developed markets.
Both goals -- inspired by its work with WWF -- are based on 2015 target years and 2004 baselines. So far, its absolute emissions in developed countries fell 8 percent. Coca-Cola case volume grew 23 percent from 2004-2009, a period in which its emissions ticked up 12 percent.
"We are making progress," the company wrote in the Sustainability Review, "but we have more work to do to meet these targets."
Other highlights of the report include:
• The company has pledged to recovering the equivalent of half of the bottles and cans it sells globally by 2015. In 2009, direct recovery totaled 36 percent.
• Packaging efficiency efforts, including lightweighting, reduced PET use and increased recycled material use, saved the company 85,000 metric tons of primary packaging, which translates to more than $100 million in cost savings. The company introduced the PlantBottle PET package in 2009, with plans to roll out 2.5 billion packages in 2010.
• Through engagement with Greenpeace, Coca-Cola committed to swapping all coolers and vending machines with HFC-free equipment by the end of 2015. Since 2006, the company has replaced more than 240,000 units, installed more than 3.1 million energy management devices to monitor refrigeration units, and invested more than $60 million in cooling R&D.
• With the exception of one year, absolute system-wide energy use has been on the rise since 2004. When measured against liters of product produced, Coca-Cola's energy efficiency ticked downward in 2009; between 2004 and 2009, its energy efficiency improved 13 percent.
Image CC licensed by Flickr user swruler9284.
There's no doubt that Coca
There's no doubt that Coca Cola is one of the more profitable companies in the world. No matter what redvoid thinks, it's also here to stay. So any effort they make is a good one.
I agree, Coke is setting an
I agree, Coke is setting an example with some fairly ambitious targets for which other companies can aspire to. Redvoid, take your high-fructose corn syrup ranting elsewhere - it is neither helpful, nor inspiring for anyone - specifically the business community for which real change can happen.
There is nothing sustainable
There is nothing sustainable about Coca-Cola. Even without analyzing the myriad of toxic chemicals in the ingredients list and each of their individual environmental impacts, just the presence of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) all by itself is a product of unsustainable farm subsidies, GMO "roundup ready corn" which takes 1/ gallon of unsustainable oil to produce a single bushel of, which is also sprayed heavily with the herbicide round-up, which causes environmental runoff, fish kills, and wipes out entire ecosystems, not to mention damages human health when injested in products like Coca-Cola, which is made my Monsanto the makers of Agent Orange, PCBs, Bovine Growth Hormone, and Aspartame which are all cancer causing neurotoxins, many of which are outlawed in the EU. HFCS is also one of the largest contributors to the obesity epidemic, which escalates, healthcare costs, causes type-2 diabetes, and has produced the first generation of American children who will live shorter lives than their parents.
Then this chemical soup is packaged in BPA plastic bottles which ravage the environment which can be witnessed on a massive scale by looking at the Pacific Gyre, and also wreck human health by causing cancer. Then these plastic bottles are put on fossil fuel burning trucks and shipped to every grocery store, convenience store, restaurant and vending machine in the world creating greenhouse gasses the entire way. Even if Coca-Cola was just water, this would be an unsustainable practice.
The fact that they don't address any sustainability issues except trying to use slightly less damaging to the ozone layer coolants in the vending machines at the end of this toxic fossil fuel burning orgy, does not excuse them of the damage they've done at every other link in the chain.
Their use of water of any kind at a point in history where millions of people around the world are dying in water crisis after water crisis like Darfour, and their use of water is purely greed driven and toxic to the health of people and the planet is beyond disingenuous and reaches well into reckless.
Coca-Cola sustainable? um, likely never...