Water: Coca-Cola wasting less to make a liter of the fizzy stuff
If you're a business like Coca-Cola, the world's largest marketer of non-alcoholic beverages in bottles and cans, you'd better be worrying about the state of our water supply.
Indeed, a focus on water stewardship is one of the main tenet of the company's ongoing sustainability efforts, as I reported late last year.
According to Coca-Cola's latest corporate sustainability report, the company now uses 1.67 liters of water for every 1 liter of beverage that it creates, a reduction of 3.5 percent from 2008.
There's a whole section on water stewardship in its larger report.
The company's concerns span many of its North American and European territories, where shortages are expected over the next decade.
Its focus in taking action comes in six areas that are mandated under the UN Global Compact's CEO Water Mandate:
- Direct operations
- Supply chain and watershed
- Collective action
- Community engagement
- Public policy
- Transparency
To date, the company has completed what it is calling Source Water Vulnerability Assessments (SVAs) in 12 of its production facilities.
"As a result of the SVAs we have completed to date, we have a deeper understanding of where our water comes from and what threatens the quality and quantity of our water supplies. More than 90 percent of the water we use comes from municipal sources; less than 10 percent of our water withdrawals come from on-site groundwater withdraws."
Kind of makes it sound like a bank, doesn't it?
In any case, Coca-Cola's emphasis is on replenishment of supplies. It is experimenting with rain barrels and rain gardens; the one in Niles, Ill., is projected to replenish 5.5 million liters of water per year.
And it is using varies technologies, notably air rinsers to cut down on the use of water in its manufacturing operations.
Here are some non-water-related stats from the report:
- Coca-Cola calculates its carbon footprint at 5.4 million metric tons, which is a reduction of 11.5 percent from 2007
- The company has achieved 92 percent and 99 percent waste recycling rates at its North American and European facilities
- With 336 hybrids in use across the United States, Coca-Cola now claims the largest hybrid fleet in North America
- Last year, the company introduced a bottle from a material called PlantBottle, which contains up to 30 percent of plant-based materials
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com