Coke Goes Green with Specific Sustainability Goals

Coca-Cola recently announced specific, strategic goals for progress in sustainability. According to Coke CEO John F. Brock. "We continue to embed CSR throughout our business [and] it is playing an increasingly important role in helping us to capture operational efficiencies, drive effectiveness, and eliminate waste."

Coke's recent sustainability document (PDF) reports the following specific goals in the areas of water stewardship, sustainable packaging, and emissions reduction.

- Water Stewardship: Coke is committed to reducing water use at its manufacturing plants by 10% by 2010. Longer term, the company aims to establish a sustainable manufacturing operation in which just one liter of water to produce each liter of product. (In 2007, Coke used 1.77 liters of water per liter of product, a 3% improvement in efficiency over the previous year.)

- Sustainable Packaging/Recycling: The company has pledged to reduce packaging material by 100,000 metric tons, or about 3% of total materials use, by 2010. Coke aims to recycle more than 90% of waste materials from production facilities by 2010. (Coke subsidiary Coca-Cola Recycling has set up recycling centers at each of the company's manufacturing facilities.) By 2010, Coke says it will increase recycled content in PET plastic bottles to an average of 10% "where commercially viable." Coke reports a "long-term" goal of recycling or reusing materials equivalent of 100% of product packaging.

- Emissions Reduction: Coke has set a short-term goals of reducing manufacturing emissions 5% from 2004 level by 2015. In 2008, Coke will calculate its carbon footprint in every country where it operates as a benchmark for setting specific, regional emissions-reduction targets. The company has also begun to "consider carbon emissions in our evaluation of capital expenditure plans," according to the report.

Download Coke's new sustainability report here (PDF).