coca cola water sustainability initiatives case study

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Coca‑Cola Shares Key Goals Detailing 2030 Water Security Strategy

The Coca‑Cola Company today announced three goals accelerating its action on water during the UN 2023 Water Conference .

Chairman and CEO James Quincey participated in events during the week to share how the company is prioritizing water investments where they are needed most. The company’s holistic 2030 water strategy aims to achieve water security in the company’s operations, local watersheds and communities—where it operates, sources agricultural ingredients for beverages and touches people’s lives. 

“We recognize that water is essential to our business and to the communities where we operate, and are committed to being responsible stewards of this vital resource,” Quincey said. “We want to do this by improving water availability, quality, access and governance – and taking a more granular watershed-based approach. In short, we’re focusing on doing what matters most, where it matters most.”

The company announced three goals related to the strategy’s key focus areas:

- Achieve 100% circular water use – or regenerative water use – across 175 facilities identified as “leadership locations” by 2030. 

- Work with partners to help improve the health of 60 watersheds identified as most critical for the company's operations and agricultural supply chains by 2030. 

- Aim to return a cumulative total of 2 trillion liters of water to nature and communities globally, between 2021-2030. 

During the conference, Bea Perez, SVP and Chief Communications, Sustainability & Strategic Partnerships Officer, announced that the company is joining the Business Leaders’ Open Call to Accelerate Action on Water – an initiative of the UN Global Compact, the CEO Water Mandate and others. Furthering collective action, the company is joined in this effort by three of its bottling partners – Coca‑Cola FEMSA, ARCA Continental and Coca‑Cola Europacific Partners.

This initiative means the company will partner to build water resilience across operations and supply chains, and will work with partners to achieve collective positive water impact in at least 100 vulnerable water basins by 2030.

Additionally, The Coca‑Cola Foundation recently awarded a $1.25 million grant to global nonprofit Imagine H20 to scale entrepreneurial solutions for water-stressed and climate- impacted communities.

How Coca‑Cola Approaches Water Stewardship

Water is a priority for The Coca‑Cola Company because it is vital to its business and critical to public health, food security, biodiversity and the climate crisis. The company has operations nearly everywhere in the world – in more than 200 countries and territories – which comes with a responsibility to address water stress, protect local water resources and help build community climate resilience. That’s why the company’s 2030 water strategy is focused on accelerating the actions needed to increase water security where the company operates, sources ingredients and touch people’s lives.  

The company is focused on good water stewardship, starting within its own four walls, and extending outside. It invests in initiatives to reduce the amount of water used in making beverages, and to treat and reuse water where possible. The company also works to preserve nature, biodiversity and promote advanced water management practices.

Outside its own operations, one key aspect of the strategy is replenishing the water used in its products. This means for the amount of water used in finished beverages, that same amount is returned back to nature and communities. 

Here are some key actions the company is taking to achieve its goals:

- Working to achieve regenerative water use – reducing, reusing, recycling and replenishing the water used to produce its beverages. 

- Improving community access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene while supporting people – especially women and girls – to prepare and rapidly recover from water-related crises.

- In priority watersheds, establishing and implementing watershed stewardship plans to improve shared challenges (quantity, quality, ecosystems, infrastructure, governance).

- Sourcing “water-sustainable” ingredients and supporting nature-based solutions.

- Working with suppliers so they use less water to grow ingredients.

- Partnering with governments, NGOs, communities and other companies to share resources and take collective action that creates scale and advances innovation and science.

- Advocating for good water governance and smart water policies while engaging all stakeholders on responsible water use – including customers and consumers.

The company will continue to work with partners including the World Bank’s Water Resources Group, CEO Water Mandate, Global Water Challenge, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and many others in pursuit of these goals.

“As we seek to achieve large-scale impact globally, collective action is critical. We cannot do this alone, and to achieve long-term change, we must work together,” said Madhu Rajesh, Coca‑Cola’s global lead for water & sustainable agriculture. “We partner with governments, NGOs, communities and other companies to share resources, to increase all our efforts and to generate a bigger impact. We encourage others to join us in these efforts.” 

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The Urge To Help

Resisting urges, promoting reflection

Coca-Cola’s Water Stewardship: Evaluating the World’s Largest Beverage Company’s Replenish Africa Initiative

Cover image courtesy of Coca-Cola’s Replenish Africa Initiative.

Written by Daniel Cheong, The University of Oklahoma

In this article, Coca-Cola’s Replenish Africa Initiative is examined against the backdrop of the global water crisis.

Abstract 

This article is an investigation into Coca-Cola’s motivations for engaging in African development through the Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN), a water stewardship program. Through RAIN, Coca-Cola has launched numerous water restoration projects across Africa. Due to the contributions of the RAIN program and other global water stewardship efforts, Coca-Cola touts itself as a water neutral company, as it offsets every drop of water used in its operations through water stewardship. However, given the immense size of Coca-Cola and its water-related operations, RAIN is insufficient to supplant Coca-Cola’s water usage, and Coca-Cola runs RAIN largely as a distraction from the company’s waste of water. Criticisms of Coca-Cola’s water stewardship lie within its misleading presentation of its activities and Coca-Cola’s harmful water practices elsewhere in the world. 

Introduction 

The urge to help Africa has inspired much foreign intervention, for better or for worse. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that endeavor to solve Africa’s problems face a dilemma where good intentions can be misguided, and the sheer complexity of the issue they try to address is either underestimated. The global water crisis ravaging Africa fails to be an exception, and the case of Coca-Cola’s water stewardship in Africa highlights the disparity between an NGO’s intentions and the effects of its contributions. With The Coca-Cola Foundation’s Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN) as a vehicle, Coca-Cola provides solutions to many of Africa’s water problems, aiding at least forty-one African countries [1] . This benefits the Coca-Cola brand as sustainable, and the restoration of water displaced by the company can lead to a reduction in overall global water consumption. However, the total contributions of Coca-Cola’s water stewardship to alleviate the global water crisis is exceeded by the destruction the company does to local water ecosystems, and Coca-Cola hides this fact. For Coca-Cola, rather than implementing costly operational changes, the company has elected to run various water stewardship projects whose cumulative sum can outweigh the company’s water usage, so that the company can achieve a state known as water neutrality. Coca-Cola’s public relations team uses the company’s water stewardship efforts to generate positive buzz for the company, but these efforts fail to solve the core of the global water crisis. This article explores the motivations behind Coca-Cola, a profit-driven multinational corporation’s, urge to help Africa and critically assess its water stewardship on an international scale. This article contends that Coca-Cola’s water stewardship scores neglectful at best and malicious at worst, as the company touts the positive impact brought about by the Replenish Africa Initiative to conceal its negative contributions to the global water crisis, which outweigh any benefits brought by replenishing Africa. For RAIN specifically, Coca-Cola uses RAIN as a tool to garner international goodwill and to overshadow its inability to become fully water sustainable. Two major concerns will be raised regarding Coca-Cola’s water practice: the ineffectiveness of RAIN’s water displacement projects to compensate for Coca-Cola’s impact on water and the existence of water management scandals outside of Africa that dispute the company’s sincerity to mitigate its waste of water. 

What is the Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN)? 

Due to the increasing consumption of water, an impending global water crisis is approaching, which carries numerous social, environmental, and economic repercussions. Water-related issues are amplified further in developing regions in Africa, which experience “severe health issues” from “a lack of proper sanitation and drinking water” [2]. Coca-Cola conducts its efforts to alleviate Africa’s water problems through a program called Replenish Africa, abbreviated RAIN. RAIN was launched in 2009 as Coca-Cola’s “flagship African community program” for “clean water and sanitation access” [3] . Prior to the establishment of RAIN, Coca-Cola took strides towards improving the global water situation, initially in 2004 when the company’s first global water efficiency progress report was created and later in 2007 when the company announced Replenish, its first water stewardship program [4] . The target of Replenish is explicit: “return to nature and communities an amount of water equivalent to what is used in finished beverages” before 2020 [5] . There is a term to describe Coca-Cola’s goal to “give” a drop of water “for every drop” it uses: water neutrality [6] . RAIN, an initiative committed to improving water access in Africa, is the product of the goals set by Replenish. Through RAIN, Coca-Cola enacts water stewardship projects to improve the state of water access in Africa. Projects range from hygienic water training in Ebola-ravaged countries to bolstering existing aquifers in South Africa [7] . RAIN aims to conduct enough water restoration projects to offset all the water filling Coca-Cola’s soda bottles, effectively replacing every drop used in its bottles.  

The accomplishments of RAIN are impressive, and the organization appears reputable. Notably, RAIN has met its intended goal five years before the deadline of 2020 [8] . RAIN’s triumph in meeting Coca-Cola’s key water stewardship goal five years early resulted in a $35 million expansion of the program, further bolstering the program’s capacity to assist Africa. As of writing this article, its website lists many impressive achievements, including but not limited to reaching out to forty-one African countries, boasting a network of over three hundred partners both public and private, and positively affecting water access and sanitation for over six million Africans [1] . Furthermore, a review of RAIN shows that the organization’s achievements are not simply for show. RAIN takes on sophisticated water issues and presents solutions that address not only the scientific needs of the community but also its social needs. RAIN’s projects fall under one of three specific focus categories: water sanitation and hygiene, productive use of water, and watershed protection [1] . Furthermore, for any given project, three community-based criteria must be met before the project is greenlit: it “must enable women and youth empowerment”, “build the capacity of utilities”, and “increase water security” [1] . The specificity of the projects RAIN undergoes and the community-oriented criteria supplementing each project showcases RAIN’s social consciousness and thorough planning. 

Specific RAIN projects highlight the organization’s ability to present complex solutions to complex problems. Two examples shared in this article are RAIN’s water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions and RAIN’s watershed work in Matatiele, South Africa. The RAIN Water for Schools project, a project designed to address the first focus of RAIN, involves building water points and gender-segregated latrines for one hundred schools in South Africa, for the express purpose of “[increasing] female attendance in schools and [empowering] girls to share proper hygiene and sanitation behaviors with their communities” [9] . To assist RAIN with its efforts, the South African government’s Department of Basic Education, The Mvula Trust, and H2O for Life have partnered with RAIN. This project demonstrates RAIN’s multi-faceted approach to community development and water troubleshooting towards a multifold goal, in this case helping access to sanitary water conditions and empowering women. RAIN implements a similar multifactorial approach in its watershed project in Matatiele, complete with an NGO partner with whom to share the workload. In Matatiele, women and youth are employed to clear invasive plant species that disrupt the flow of local creeks  [10] . RAIN administers similar work in the Wolseley Wetlands of South Africa, and both plant clearing projects are carried out with the partnership of the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature South Africa. Throughout Africa, RAIN has executed approximately one hundred and twenty projects exhibiting high levels of social and ecological awareness, marking a momentous contribution towards replenishing Africa’s water.  

The Advantages of The Coca-Cola Company’s Water Stewardship 

One major benefit from Coca-Cola’s operation of RAIN is that it affirms Coca-Cola’s image as a sustainable company that promotes progressive values. For most companies, branding is a crucial component for success; Coca-Cola’s brand ranks among the most recognizable internationally  [11] . Coca-Cola deliberately associates its brand with promoting international human rights, global stability, and most importantly, sustainable development, which is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the future generations to meet their own needs” [2]. To this end, Coca-Cola engages in international activities such as RAIN to strengthen Coca-Cola’s association with world peace, and every year, the company releases a sustainability report recounting its progress and ongoing activities in the pursuit of sustainability. In an exploration of sustainability reports released by Coca-Cola to the public, Jones and Comfort identified several common themes across the company’s brand of sustainability, such as climate protection, water stewardship, human and workplace rights, community development, the economic empowerment of women, and sustainable agriculture. Each of these values presented by Coca-Cola is reflected in RAIN, further reinforcing the association between Coca-Cola and sustainability. Furthermore, Coca-Cola’s work to promote peace and stability can enact long-term gains for the company upon success. By “contributing to national stability”, Coca-Cola can plant its brand into a developing nation’s culture or create new markets  [12] .  

Coca-Cola routinely practices global sustainability efforts such as RAIN to support its brand. In an article about Coca-Cola’s international activities and their impact on Coca-Cola’s brand titled “The Business of Peace: Coca-Cola’s Contribution to Stability, Growth, and Optimism”, Coca-Cola executive Hamish Banks describes the mechanism of how Coca-Cola brands itself as the “commodity of humanity” [12] . Banks introduces the Golden Triangle model of business to describe how Coca-Cola efforts, which usually involve extensive partnership networks. In the Golden Triangle model, the government, civil society, and the private sector all cooperate to achieve a common goal. The result of a Golden Triangle relationship varies from the execution of an engineering project to the enactment of a progressive policy, and in a traditional Golden Triangle relationship, all parties involved benefit from the collaboration. The Golden Triangle model provides legitimacy and context to RAIN; in fact, Coca-Cola’s web page on the RAIN program directly mentions partnerships with “governments, the private sector and civil society” [3] . For example, in RAIN’s Water for Schools project, the partners that form a Golden Triangle relationship are named. Alongside Coca-Cola, the South African government’s Department of Basic Education and citizens who are employed for the project fulfill the other two requirements to create a complete Golden Triangle. To build its brand, Coca-Cola forms Golden Triangle relationships across the globe, boosting the company’s association with “universal human traits”  [12] . These international ventures ultimately enhance Coca-Cola’s social value and branding.  

Branding aside, Coca-Cola holds a vested interest in water stewardship due to the increasing scarcity of water. An existing prediction exists that “two-thirds of the world’s population” will experience “water scarcity” by 2025, provided that no change to current water consumption behavior occurs [2]. Additionally, an estimation conducted by the 2030 Water Resources Group, a collection comprised of Coca-Cola, its business partners, and the World Bank, by 2030, water demand will outstrip water supply [2]. As a beverage company, Coca-Cola relies on water to create its products. Water is the “lifeblood” of the company, as well as a critical contributor to the “safety, health and sustainability of communities and ecosystems where it operates” [2]. In order to prevent a potential water crisis, Coca-Cola began its sustainability efforts, with water stewardship efforts like RAIN becoming a vital component of the company’s strategy, and failure to achieve sustainability could result in a shortage of water for the company to use. Therefore, gains in branding and the threat of a water crisis provides business justification for Coca-Cola to participate in international outreach such as RAIN. By engaging in sustainable development efforts, both Coca-Cola and the international community benefit.  

The Flaws in Coca-Cola’s Water Strategy 

In 2016, an official Coca-Cola press release announced that the company had replenished all the water it uses. The crux of its claim is that Coca-Cola managed to “replenish” the water from its “global sales volume”, by restoring 115% of the water “used in Coca-Cola’s beverages” back to the communities  [6] . Despite the incredulity of Coca-Cola’s claim, the press release’s description of the company’s methodology is sound. Through a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and following verification by several third-party firms, a report over one thousand pages long was produced which concluded that Coca-Cola reached its water replenishment goal. The announcement should be cause for celebration, but there are several dubious aspects of the report that expose the underlying flaws of Coca-Cola’s water stewardship practices.  

Coca-Cola’s press release unveiled deceptive practices in its water stewardship efforts and their representation. For example, never in the press release is the term “water neutrality”   stated, but it is heavily alluded to in the article’s rhetoric. The callback to the original goal of Coca-Cola’s Replenish, the use of quantitative figures for readers to compare the water replenished versus water used, and the language of the article in how Coca-Cola was able to “replenish, or in other words balance, the equivalent amount of water” to meet “such an aggressive water replenishment target” all imply that Coca-Cola became water neutral, but it was never explicitly declared [6] . Still, a 2016 full-page ad for Coca-Cola in  The New York Times  declares “For every drop we use, we give one back” [13] . Readers are left to draw their own conclusions, but the choice of language used strongly implies water neutrality. The reason that the term is never mentioned is simple: the company was never truly water neutral. Although Coca-Cola can safely declare that they have replenished all the water that can fill its bottles, the same cannot be said for the company’s overall water use, which in comparison dwarfs the amount of water replenished by RAIN [13] . Furthermore, in some cases, RAIN actually increases water consumption, as several of their projects are geared towards improving water access, which in turn promotes more water use. Coca-Cola’s dance around the term “water neutrality” reveals a calculated PR attempt by Coca-Cola to display itself as a sustainable company that achieved water neutrality while still leaving room for plausible deniability. 

Activists have criticized Coca-Cola’s water stewardship by pointing out that Coca-Cola still uses more water in its operations than it restores from water stewardship. Richard Phillips summarizes the challenge to Coca-Cola’s water neutrality claim in “Taking the fizz out of Coca-Cola’s water replenishment claims.” First, he argues that the primary method by which Coca-Cola replenishes water, water stewardship projects, distracts from the company’s own water usage practices, which are lackluster. Second, Phillips points out the “uneven distribution of the water Coca-Cola returns”, seeing as only “half” of the water Coca-Cola replenishes occurs at the water source used for its operations [14] . This is a large issue because, according to the Centre for Research on Globalization, “Water issues are mostly localized in their impact” [14] . Improving water accessibility in Africa contributes little to depleted water from “an aquifer in India” [14] . Controversies regarding Coca-Cola’s operations in India accentuate Phillips’ point; while Coca-Cola has been an excellent water steward in Africa with RAIN, the company has sparked major backlash from Indian activists for its overuse of local aquifers. Indian activist Amit Srivastava, in response to Coca-Cola’s claim of water neutrality, calls the company “misleading” and “designed”, while being “far removed from the reality on the ground” [15] . He delivers a litany of Coca-Cola’s mismanagement of water in India, including the government closure of the Kerala bottling plant in 2005 and the cessation of the bottling plant in Varanasi in 2014, both occurring because of Coca-Cola’s overconsumption of local aquifers. The closure of the Varanasi bottling plant especially reflects the hypocrisy of Coca-Cola’s water practices since it transpired after Coca-Cola committed to water sustainability. Thus, Coca-Cola fails to solve local water issues the company itself causes, and its water stewardship efforts are not the solution. Finally, Phillips’ last argument underscores the futility of Coca-Cola’s water stewardship endeavors. He notes that Coca-Cola’s reported water usage deliberately excludes the largest contributor to its total, agriculture. According to the Water Foot Print Network, 442 liters of water are required to grow the cane sugar for one liter of Coca-Cola, and 618 liters of water are required to produce one liter of Coca-Cola from High Fructose Corn Syrup [14] . Coca-Cola prides itself in restoring around 0.5 liters per bottle of Coca-Cola, a far cry from the water used for Coca-Cola’s agricultural operations. Hence, Coca-Cola’s claim of water neutrality is misrepresentative of the ongoing water crisis, and its water stewardship efforts, including RAIN, have a negligible impact on making the brand sustainable.  

Perhaps one of the most biting criticisms of Coca-Cola stems from an investigation by Christine MacDonald with the aid of The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. MacDonald blasts Coca-Cola’s water neutrality claim along with Coca-Cola’s history of water practices, starting with the very concept of “water neutrality.” MacDonald traces the term “water neutrality” to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, where a South African businessman coined the term. Intended as a water analog to the carbon offset program, the Water Neutral Foundation was founded to support the idea, but “struggled to earn credibility with the scientific community” due to the absence of a reliable method for “assessing water use” [13] . When, during that same year, a “water-use accounting method” known as the Water Footprint was developed, Coca-Cola saw an opportunity to improve its water sustainability efforts [13] . The Water Neutral Working Group, which was comprised of Coca-Cola, the Water Footprint team, representatives of the Water Neutral Foundation, and other companies and agencies, began discussions to address the water crisis. However, the optimism entering the Water Footprint conversations between companies and conservationists crumpled after “initial calculations” unveiled an alarming finding for the practicality of water stewardship: “there aren’t enough viable offset projects to actually balance corporate agricultural water footprints” [13] . Even if it were “clear”, that Coca-Cola could not become water neutral, its executives elected to “push on”  [13] . First, the company implemented “water accounting sleight of hand” to lower their water footprint benchmarks, and later, Coca-Cola terminated its partnership with the original developers of the Water Footprint in favor of The Nature Conservancy, an organization that receives sizeable donations from Coca-Cola [13] . A “Water Footprint” for the “global enterprise” of Coca-Cola was never formally created, and the benchmark of water neutrality as conservationists intended was never set  [13] . Coca-Cola’s response to the insufficiency of water stewardship projects illustrates the company’s willingness to neglect the true effort needed to effect global change while still generating good press through soft water stewardship practices.  

Corporations as Water Stewards 

Coca-Cola is not alone in water stewardship. Other large companies, such as Unilever, Nestle, Heineken, and Pepsi Co engage in water stewardship practices  [16] . Some companies, such as Nestle, Idea, and SABMiller, were participants with Coca-Cola in the Water Neutral Working Group meetings of the late 2000s  [13] . Barilla, a pasta company, offers an alternative example for a multinational corporation undertaking water sustainability activities. Like Coca-Cola, agriculture dominates much of Barilla’s water footprint, as Barilla needs to grow wheat to produce pasta [16] . However, in contrast to Coca-Cola’s utilization of international water stewardship projects to reduce its water footprint, Barilla’s focus is on optimizing its agricultural supply chain. In their steps to address the impact of agriculture on its water footprint, Barilla has implemented the Aureo Wheat Programme, a program dedicated to transitioning “the cultivation of durum wheat” into the “fully rainfed” “Aureo wheat” bringing the company freshwater savings of approximately 40 trillion liters from 2011 to 2015 [16] . Ultimately, a case study of Barilla underscores the shortcomings of Coca-Cola’s water sustainability approach through water stewardship.  

Much study has been performed on the growing number of large corporations engaging in Golden Triangle-based water stewardship projects. In her article on the subject, Finnish Environmental Institute scientist Sojamo outlines the nature of corporate water stewardship. Sojamo defines corporate water stewardship as “beyond the fence-line” activities of companies that promote “socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial” water usage with a “stakeholder-inclusive process that involves site and catchment-based actions” [17] . This definition encompasses a variety of activities, and Coca-Cola’s activities through RAIN embody the typical example of corporate water stewardship. Despite the potential of corporate water stewardship to do good, the practice has been largely “perceived” as a “PR-stunt” or a bid for “private and foreign securitization of resources”, “worsening the situation in places with weak public institutions and regulation” [17] . Water is a lucrative and shrinking commodity, after all, but corporate intervention has strong potential to benefit “solving the pressing global water challenges”, and “governments and communities” have a “lack of capacity and resources” to handle the challenge of water on their own [17] . Furthermore, both water-using corporations and public institutions win in a successful water stewardship effort, as an increase in the availability of water worldwide benefits both parties. Thus, a so-called “prisoner’s dilemma” between corporations and government ensues over their coordination in water stewardship.  

In her breakdown of the “prisoner’s dilemma” of corporate water stewardship, Sojamo determines the vulnerabilities present in the current state of corporate water stewardship and calls for action to resolve them. At its core, both local governments and corporations stand to “gain important benefits from cooperating or suffer from the failure to do so” while a cooperative partnership is “difficult or expensive” to establish [17] . Two major obstacles feed the “prisoner’s dilemma” of corporate water stewardship: the power imbalance favoring corporations over other agents in water stewardship and the ambiguous legitimacy for corporations to “engage on water” [17] . First, the “power asymmetry” between corporations and “other actors” has been “attributed to countless injustices on water” and is widely seen as the source of the “critical scholarship” on corporate water stewardship [17] . Second, legitimacy is “dynamically intertwined” with corporate power and must be accepted for a water stewardship initiative lest the corporation is faced with backlash [17] . Three recommendations are presented to “unlock” the “prisoner’s dilemma”: an open acknowledgment of power, a “need to more carefully evaluate and enhance” the legitimacy of corporate water stewardship, and support to strengthen public institutions and civil society [17] . Each of these recommendations can contribute to a future of more successful water stewardship initiatives.  

Conclusion 

In this article, Coca-Cola’s flagship water stewardship program, RAIN, is evaluated. Despite its corporate nature arousing suspicion for the program’s intentions, RAIN’s efforts are found to be genuine and beneficial to Africa, and both RAIN’s mission and the projects it undertakes are well developed. However, RAIN is not bereft of its corporate roots. Coca-Cola, which operates RAIN, incorporates RAIN’s accomplishments into the company’s branding as a sustainable company, but upon scrutiny, Coca-Cola’s actions show that it cares more about its image as a sustainable company than in truly becoming sustainable, as seen by water controversies in India, the relatively small impact of RAIN to address the global water crisis, and the company’s deceptive “water neutral” marketing. Finally, other efforts to combat the water crisis discussed, such as Barilla, a multinational pasta corporation that does not engage in flashy water stewardship activities, and the practice of corporate water stewardship as a trend is examined. In summary, although Coca-Cola would advertise otherwise, it is not a sustainable company and might not ever be.  

This post may have been edited by admin for clarity and length.

Bibliography 

Primary sources .

“About the Replenish Africa Initiative | RAIN.”  Replenish Africa , 2018, replenishafrica.com/about/. Accessed 4 May 2021. 

“Coca-Cola Intensifies Water Stewardship Partnerships in Middle East and North Africa .” M2 Presswire , Mar 22, 2018.  ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/wire-feeds/coca-cola-intensifies-water-stewardship/docview/2016586577/se-2?accountid=12964. 

“Coke: First Fortune 500 Company to Replenish All the Water It Uses Globally | Press Release.”  Coca-Colacompany.com , 2016, www.coca-colacompany.com/press-releases/coca-cola-is-the-first-fortune-500-company-to-replenish-all-the-water-it-uses-globally. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

Hower, Mike. “Coca-Cola Extends Funding for Replenish Africa Initiative by $35 Million.”  Sustainable Brands , Sustainable Brands, 17 Apr. 2015, sustainablebrands.com/read/leadership/coca-cola-extends-funding-for-replenish-africa-initiative-by-35-million. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

Manley, Lisa. “PRESS RELEASE: Coca-Cola Helps Improve Lives of African Women and Girls.”  Dow Jones Institutional News , Mar 22, 2011.  ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/wire-feeds/press-release-coca-cola-helps-improve-lives/docview/2156469862/se-2?accountid=12964. 

Nine Decades of Coca-Cola in Africa. SyndiGate Media Inc , Cape Town, 2018 . ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/other-sources/nine-decades-coca-cola-africa/docview/2038157085/se-2?accountid=12964. 

“Projects of the Replenish Africa Initiative | RAIN.” Replenish Africa, 2018, replenishafrica.com/projects/. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

“Replenish Africa Initiative | the Coca-Cola Company.”  Coca-Colacompany.com , 2021, www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainable-business/water-stewardship/replenish-africa-initiative. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

Smith, Theresa. “Coca-Cola Replenishing Water Supply in South Africa.”  ESI-Africa.com , 15 Jan. 2021, www.esi-africa.com/regional-news/southern-africa/coca-cola-replenishing-water-supply-in-south-africa/. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021. 

Srivastava, Amit. “Never Mind the Greenwash – Coca Cola Can Never Be ‘Water Neutral.’”  The Ecologist , 17 Nov. 2017, theecologist.org/2015/aug/25/never-mind-greenwash-coca-cola-can-never-be-water-neutral. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

“The Coca-Cola Company.”  The Nature Conservancy , 3 May 2021, www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/how-we-work/working-with-companies/companies-investing-in-nature1/coca-cola-company/. 

“Water Stewardship & Sustainability | the Coca-Cola Company.”  Coca-Colacompany.com , 2021, www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainable-business/water-stewardship. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

Secondary Sources 

Antonelli, Marta, and Luca F. Ruini. “Business Engagement with Sustainable Water Resource Management through Water Footprint Accounting: The Case of the Barilla Company.”  Sustainability , vol. 7, no. 6, 2015, pp. 6742-6758 . ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/scholarly-journals/business-engagement-with-sustainable-water/docview/1696014615/se-2?accountid=12964, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/10.3390/su7066742. 

Banks, Hamish. “The Business of Peace: Coca-Cola’s Contribution to Stability, Growth, and Optimism.”  Business Horizons , vol. 59, no. 5, Sept. 2016, pp. 455–461, reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0007681316300192?token=D5824FA36CAAC767CDD547B1BA1F0A847B654DA630D3D5964178A761EFA7C079A46D2E3143855180F4FED00BB67A4E4E&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20210423023141, 10.1016/j.bushor.2016.03.018. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021. 

Jones, Peter, and Daphne Comfort. “The Coca Cola Brand and Sustainability.”  Indonesian Journal of Applied Business and Economic Research , vol. 1, no. 1, 2018, pp. 34–46, econbiz.org/index.php/ijaber/article/view/1/3. Accessed 23 Apr. 2021. 

Sojamo, Suvi. “Unlocking the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” of Corporate Water Stewardship in South Africa-Exploring Corporate Power and Legitimacy of Engagement in Water Management and Governance.”  Sustainability , vol. 7, no. 6, 2015, pp. 6893-6918 . ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/scholarly-journals/unlocking-prisoners-dilemma-corporate-water/docview/1696014933/se-2?accountid=12964, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/10.3390/su7066893. 

Walsh, Heather, and Timothy J. Dowding. “Sustainability and The Coca-Cola Company: The Global Water Crisis and Coca-Cola’s Business Case for Water Stewardship.”  International Journal of Business Insights & Transformation  4 (2012).  

MacDonald, Christine. “Inside the Bad Math That Lets Coca-Cola Say It Gives Back All the Water It Uses.”  The Verge , The Verge, 31 May 2018, www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17377964/coca-cola-water-sustainability-recycling-controversy-investigation. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021. 

Phillips, Richard. “Taking the Fizz out of Coca-Cola’s Water Replenishment Claims.”  Corporate Citizenship , 19 Sept. 2016, corporate-citizenship.com/2016/09/19/taking-fizz-coca-colas-water-replenishment-claims/. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[1] “About the Replenish Africa Initiative | RAIN.”  Replenish Africa , 2018, replenishafrica.com/about/. Accessed 4 May 2021. 

[2] Walsh, Heather, and Timothy J. Dowding. “Sustainability and The Coca-Cola Company: The Global Water Crisis and Coca-Cola’s Business Case for Water Stewardship.”  International Journal of Business Insights & Transformation  4 (2012).  

[3] “Replenish Africa Initiative | the Coca-Cola Company.”  Coca-Colacompany.com , 2021, www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainable-business/water-stewardship/replenish-africa-initiative. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[4] “Water Stewardship & Sustainability | the Coca-Cola Company.”  Coca-Colacompany.com , 2021, www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainable-business/water-stewardship. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[5] “The Coca-Cola Company.”  The Nature Conservancy , 3 May 2021, www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/how-we-work/working-with-companies/companies-investing-in-nature1/coca-cola-company/. 

[6] “Coke: First Fortune 500 Company to Replenish All the Water It Uses Globally | Press Release.”  Coca-Colacompany.com , 2016, www.coca-colacompany.com/press-releases/coca-cola-is-the-first-fortune-500-company-to-replenish-all-the-water-it-uses-globally. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[7] “Projects of the Replenish Africa Initiative | RAIN.” Replenish Africa, 2018, replenishafrica.com/projects/. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[8] Hower, Mike. “Coca-Cola Extends Funding for Replenish Africa Initiative by $35 Million.”  Sustainable Brands , Sustainable Brands, 17 Apr. 2015, sustainablebrands.com/read/leadership/coca-cola-extends-funding-for-replenish-africa-initiative-by-35-million. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[9] Manley, Lisa. “PRESS RELEASE: Coca-Cola Helps Improve Lives of African Women and Girls.”  Dow Jones Institutional News , Mar 22, 2011.  ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/wire-feeds/press-release-coca-cola-helps-improve-lives/docview/2156469862/se-2?accountid=12964. 

[10] Smith, Theresa. “Coca-Cola Replenishing Water Supply in South Africa.”  ESI-Africa.com , 15 Jan. 2021, www.esi-africa.com/regional-news/southern-africa/coca-cola-replenishing-water-supply-in-south-africa/. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021. 

[11] Jones, Peter, and Daphne Comfort. “The Coca Cola Brand and Sustainability.”  Indonesian Journal of Applied Business and Economic Research , vol. 1, no. 1, 2018, pp. 34–46, econbiz.org/index.php/ijaber/article/view/1/3. Accessed 23 Apr. 2021. 

[12] Banks, Hamish. “The Business of Peace: Coca-Cola’s Contribution to Stability, Growth, and Optimism.”  Business Horizons , vol. 59, no. 5, Sept. 2016, pp. 455–461, reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0007681316300192?token=D5824FA36CAAC767CDD547B1BA1F0A847B654DA630D3D5964178A761EFA7C079A46D2E3143855180F4FED00BB67A4E4E&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20210423023141, 10.1016/j.bushor.2016.03.018. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021. 

[13] MacDonald, Christine. “Inside the Bad Math That Lets Coca-Cola Say It Gives Back All the Water It Uses.”  The Verge , The Verge, 31 May 2018, www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17377964/coca-cola-water-sustainability-recycling-controversy-investigation. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021.

[14] Phillips, Richard. “Taking the Fizz out of Coca-Cola’s Water Replenishment Claims.”  Corporate Citizenship , 19 Sept. 2016, corporate-citizenship.com/2016/09/19/taking-fizz-coca-colas-water-replenishment-claims/. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[15] Srivastava, Amit. “Never Mind the Greenwash – Coca Cola Can Never Be ‘Water Neutral.’”  The Ecologist , 17 Nov. 2017, theecologist.org/2015/aug/25/never-mind-greenwash-coca-cola-can-never-be-water-neutral. Accessed 5 May 2021. 

[16] Antonelli, Marta, and Luca F. Ruini. “Business Engagement with Sustainable Water Resource Management through Water Footprint Accounting: The Case of the Barilla Company.”  Sustainability , vol. 7, no. 6, 2015, pp. 6742-6758 . ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/scholarly-journals/business-engagement-with-sustainable-water/docview/1696014615/se-2?accountid=12964, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/10.3390/su7066742. 

[17] Sojamo, Suvi. “Unlocking the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” of Corporate Water Stewardship in South Africa-Exploring Corporate Power and Legitimacy of Engagement in Water Management and Governance.”  Sustainability , vol. 7, no. 6, 2015, pp. 6893-6918 . ProQuest , https://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/scholarly-journals/unlocking-prisoners-dilemma-corporate-water/docview/1696014933/se-2?accountid=12964, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/10.3390/su7066893. 

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“Striving to replenish 8.960 million liters of water by 2030”

Istanbul, Turkey

https://www.cci.com.tr/en/

To address the water consumption of its production facilities, The Coca-Cola Company is running two ongoing water replenishment programs in two different locations: Kestel, Bursa & Tekirdağ, Çorlu.

Objective :

The Water Replenishment programs aim to reduce water consumption with informed irrigation and to increase water capture through rainwater harvesting by helping the digital transformation of farmers.

Outcome & Results:  

Doktar has been managing these programs on behalf of Coca-Cola and has taken an active role in the preparation, activation, installation, management & reporting of the programs.

Using our wide farmer network, we have recruited farmers to participate in the programs and held farmer capability training to understand current irrigation practices and build new irrigation models by implementing technology. Monthly farmer meetings are conducted to address farmers’ needs and evaluate the program’s progress. Farmer accounts are setup on Doktar’s GIS Database to track data and provide progress reports.

In Kestel, digital monitoring has consisted of:

•   100 soil analyses, conducted with the Digital Soil Analysis Device
• 44 Filiz Agricultural Sensor Stations  deployed, monitoring 47,2 hectares.
• Over 100 orchards and fields monitored for soil moisture and evapotranspiration via satellites.
• 22 hectares of drip irrigation system installed.
• An artificial reservoir of 1600 m3 constructed in partnership with 3rd party contractors. Monthly water collection in the reservoir, monitored with sensors reporting the captured water volume monthly.
• To complete the digital transformation of farmers, continuous communication channels were activated via WhatsApp groups and Technical Support.

In Çorlu, d igital monitoring has consisted of:

• 64 soil analyses
• 21 Filiz Agricultural Sensor Stations deployed.
• 64 orchards and fields monitored for evapotranspiration via satellites.
• Contour Site Construction set for water capture.
• Regenerative agricultural training was conducted.

The Coca-Cola Water Replenishment programs aim to replenish 8900 million liters of water by 2030.

The program in Kestel aims to replenish 530 million tons of water by the end of 2023.

The program in Çorlu aims to replenish 4300 million tons of water by the end of 2023.

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Coca-Cola and Water Scarcity: substantial progress or just another drop in the bucket?

Coca-Cola claims to have attained water neutrality, but are communities truly reaping the benefits?

‘‘When the well is dry, we know the worth of water” -(Benjamin Franklin).

An astonishing 1.9 billion servings of Coca-Cola products are consumed every day throughout the world, requiring the funneling of over 300 billion liters of water through 863 bottling plants each year to deliver carbonated beverages to eager consumers.[1] Although such a feat is logistically impressive, the Coca-Cola Company has grown increasingly concerned about the sustainability of its water usage and the associated implications for its bottom line, [2] especially given that within the next 10 years an estimated 2.8 billion people will be at risk of encountering water shortages [3]. As climate change threatens global water security—and as political activists publicly call into question the acceptability of its practices—the Coca Cola Company has made great strides to establish their position as an eco-conscious producer. But have their efforts gone far enough?

The Case of India

Groundwater tables and freshwater sources are being depleted at alarming rates in many parts of the world due to accelerating demand by industry, and in some markets the consequences are quite serious; for instance, the World Bank recently estimated that without further intervention or technological advancement, all of the available water supplies in India will have been exhausted by 2050. [4] This was especially worrisome for Coca-Cola since, prior to 2007, it operated 24 bottling plants across India. With reliable water access already in short supply, residents and regulators alike began to fervently oppose the presence of Coca-Cola bottling plants, opening the doors to legal and reputational damages to the brand. With bad PR mounting following the shuttering of multiple bottling plants in India due to protracted legal battles with local residents and ongoing protests decrying exploitation of local resources [5], the company shifted focus toward sustainability.

Steps Toward a Sustainable Future

Pathways to Just Digital Future

Their solution was to institute a system-wide water stewardship platform to achieve water neutrality by “returning to nature and communities an amount of water equivalent to what we use in all of our products and their production by 2020.” [6] Strategies to offset water usage included plant-level innovations—such as improving manufacturing efficiency to reduce water waste and reuse of treated wastewater in boilers, evaporators, and chillers—and improving local infrastructure through partnerships with governments and NGOs to finance and build water treatment facilities, install rainwater harvesting structures, construct check dams, and restore water to natural reservoirs. [7] In essence, when water is consumed by the production process, an equal amount of usable water is returned to the environment at large or conserved from use altogether.

Global Neutrality vs Community Inequity

In 2015, Coca-Cola announced that they had achieved global water neutrality five years ahead of schedule. However, there is reason to be skeptical of the mission’s success. Although the amount of water purportedly replenished to the environment may very well balance their overall water usage from bottling, the underlying inequity at the community level remains problematic; notably, each bottling plant is not required to replenish water to its direct source, [8] and thus total water neutrality was often achieved by replenishing aquifers at locations far removed from the plant’s actual water sources, leaving local communities ever vulnerable to depletion of their water source while Coca-Cola reaps positive PR for replenishing it elsewhere. It is imperative that the next step should incorporate a blanket policy to replenish water sources within the community from which it is derived, lest the company remain vulnerable to depletion of its primary input in the given region, regulatory interference, and further reputational damage.

Bigger Opportunities Ahead

Coca-Cola’s rhetoric grossly underestimates the water footprint required to produce its beverages, commonly citing bottling requirements of 2.16L per 1L of finished product [9]. These calculations only include water consumed as an operational input but do not take into account contributions from the overall supply chain (for example, a single plastic bottle uses 4.5L of water input alone). However, the single largest contributor to the overa

ll water footprint of the company’s beverages is its major ingredient—sugar. Agriculture requires immense amounts of water to produce sugar crops, and although highly dependent on region and type of crop, it is estimated that the water footprint per beverage is at minimum 169L (using sugar beet from the Netherlands) up to a maximum of 309L (using sugar cane from Cuba). [10] Indeed, agriculture contributes the largest water footprint globally.

This represents a key opportunity; by utilizing suppliers with efficient water usage strategies—instead of those offering lowest purchase price—Coca-Cola can fulfill ethical obligations to conserve water while also fostering a future competitive advantage since, as water becomes more scarce and crop yields decline due to climate change, the company is better insulated from the expected increases in volatility of input costs and availability. [11]

(Word Count: 797)

1) Water & agriculture: Adaptive strategies at farm level. (2015). Retrieved November 4, 2016, from http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/collaborating-to-replenish-the-water-we-use 2) The Coca-Cola Company. (2008). Form 10-K submitted to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for the fiscal year 2007, Washington, D.C. Retrieved November 4, 2016, from http://www.coca-colacompany.com/investors/2008-annual-report-on-form-10-k 3) Water and Climate Change. Retrieved November 04, 2016, from http://water.worldbank.org/topics/water-resources-management/water-and-climate-change 4) The World’s Water 2006–2007: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources. (2007). P. H. Gleick, H. Cooley, D. Katz, E. Lee, J. Morrison, M. Palaniappan, A. Samulon, and G. H. Wolff. 2006. 5) Coca-Cola just achieved a major environmental goal for its water use. (2016). Harvey, C. Retrieved November 04, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/08/30/coca-cola-just-achieved-a-major-environmental-goal-for-its-water-use/ 6) Sustainability Update: Water Stewardship. (2011). Coca-Cola Company. Retrieved November 04, 2016, from http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/sustainability-update-water-stewardship 7) Business and Climate Change Adaptation: Toward Resilient Companies and Communities. (2012). United Nations Global Compact and United Nations Environment Porgramme. Retreived November 04, 2016, from http://caringforclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/Business_and_Climate_Change_Adaptation.pdf 8) Fortune 500 Company to Replenish All the Water it Uses Globally. (2016). The Coca-Cola Company. Business Wire. Retrieved November 04, 2016, from http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/cocacola-is-the-first-fortune-500-company-to-replenish-all-the-water-it-uses-globally-20160829-00001 9) Water Stewardship: Sustainability Update. (2011). The Coca-Cola Company. Retreived November 04, 2016, from http://www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainabilityreport/world/water-stewardship.html#section-meeting-our-goal-for-water-efficiency 10) Ercin, A. E., Aldaya, M. M., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2010). Corporate Water Footprint Accounting and Impact Assessment: The Case of the Water Footprint of a Sugar-Containing Carbonated Beverage. Water Resources Management, 25(2), 721-741. doi:10.1007/s11269-010-9723-8. http://temp.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Ercin-et-al-2011-CorporateWaterFootprint-Softdrink.pdf 11) Achieving food security in the face of climate change: Final Report from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change. (2012). Beddington J, Asaduzzaman M, Fernandez A, Clark M, Guillou M, Jahn M, Erda L, Mamo T, Bo NV, Nobre CA, Scholes R, Sharma R, Wakhungu J. Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/35589/climate_food_commission-final-mar2012.pdf Fig 1: http://water.worldbank.org/topics/water-resources-management/water-and-climate-change Fig 2: http://www.ceres.org/issues/water/agriculture/water-risks-food-sector Fig 3: http://www.ceres.org/issues/water/agriculture/water-risks-food-sector

Student comments on Coca-Cola and Water Scarcity: substantial progress or just another drop in the bucket?

Very insightful analysis of Coca-Cola’s business and its impact on sustainable water sources. I admire how you dismantle their takeaways on the whole water neutrality program, first, by raising the point of communities inequality and replenishment of water sources that might not be the same ones they’ve depleted, and second, by challenging their assumptions on how much water it takes to manufacture a bottle of Coca-Cola. However, I am deeply troubled by how they can actually force suppliers to adapt to more sustainable strategies without pushing costs up the supply chain. Coca-Cola has without a doubt inmense purchase power, but I wonder if by forcing their suppliers to evolve, they may be forcing them to be unprofitable. Wouldn’t a partnership between both suppliers and Coca-Cola create more value for both parties?

Interesting analysis (and critique) of Coca-Cola’s sustainability efforts. In many ways, your solution of Coke utilizing suppliers with efficient water usage strategies reminds me of our recent IKEA case, in which IKEA was debating a similar problem relating to their wood sourcing.

Though I agree there is a significant amount of water used to make Coke’s end product, it would seem that they have done some real good, for both themselves and the planet as a whole. Also, as you said, the media seems to be praising their efforts, as in the below article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/science/earth/threat-to-bottom-line-spurs-action-on-climate.html?_r=1

At what point has the company done enough? Or is the answer never? For example, you note a plastic bottle uses 4.5L – if Coca-Cola restored 3.0L, would that satisfy critics? How about 4.5L, have they done enough or do they still need to restore more than the supply chain uses? Everything has trade-offs, and it would seem Coke has made reasonable efforts while still ensuring value for their shareholders.

One particularly interesting point that I think you have raised is how Coca-Cola has chosen to communicate its water neutrality message with customers (conveniently leaving off the part about all of the water consumed during manufacturing). Though it seems like an admirable mission for Coca-Cola to undertake, it may go to show that by surfacing the issue, Coca-Cola is leaving itself open to increased scrutiny and criticism surrounding its water usage. While before, many retailers and customers may not have thought too long about how much water the company consumes, Coke has now put a spotlight on a very sensitive global issue. This attempt to create positive PR around Coke’s initiatives could leave some customers wondering why they are doing so little (and how replacing water in other parts of the world will help solve the crisis in places like India?). It is interesting that the company has chosen to focus on water replenishment for the water within each can when its “thirstiest” ingredient (sugar) is also one that has long been criticized for its contribution to obesity and health problems. Finding breakthrough ways to reduce or remove sugar would help Coca-Cola’s image on both fronts.

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Case study: How Coca-Cola is promoting the sustainability of local water sources everywhere it operates

Communities across the world rely on a sufficient quantity of safe, accessible water from sustainable ecosystems for their continued prosperity. For Coca-Cola and its bottling partners, water is equally important. It is the primary ingredient in its products, it enables its manufacturing processes and it is fundamental to the cultivation of the diverse crops Coca-Cola depends upon for its beverage ingredients and, in some cases, even its packaging.

This case study is based on the 2014/2015 Sustainability Report by Coca-Cola published on the Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Disclosure Database  that can be found at this link . Through all case studies we aim to demonstrate that CSR/ sustainability reporting done responsibly is achieved by identifying a company’s most important impacts on the environment and stakeholders and by measuring, managing and changing.

Coca-Cola is a global company, with its products sold in more than 200 countries and territories. Where it can, Coca-Cola utilizes a localized operational approach as much as possible – making its products in the same markets where it sells to its customers. This creates a business imperative that complements Coca-Cola’s ethical drive: Coca-Cola is working to promote the sustainability of local water sources everywhere it operates.     Tweet This! After measuring and setting targets, Coca-Cola took action to safely return to communities and nature an amount of water equivalent to what Coca-Cola uses in its finished beverages and their production, improve water efficiency in manufacturing operations, assess water source risks, recycle and treat water and, also, engage bottling partners, government agencies and surrounding communities in India to help replenish water resources.

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With this case study you will see:

• Which are the most important impacts (material issues) Coca-Cola has identified;
• How Coca-Cola proceeded with stakeholder engagement , and
• What actions were taken by Coca-Cola to promote the sustainability of local water sources everywhere it operates

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What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2014/2015 Sustainability Report Coca-Cola identified a range of material issues, such as active healthy living, packaging, human rights, product and ingredient safety. Among these, working to promote the sustainability of local water sources everywhere it operates stands out as a key material issue for Coca-Cola, given that communities around the world rely on a sufficient quantity of safe, accessible water from sustainable ecosystems for their continued prosperity.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The organization should identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Coca-Cola engages with:

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

Coca-Cola identified the strategic priority areas and issues it reports on through an analysis it conducted in early 2014. Coca-Cola applied the GRI Reporting Principles for Defining Report Content to select these issues. The process was:

• Using recognized sustainability reporting standards and working together with a third-party management consulting firm, Coca-Cola began with a list of 100 environmental, social and governance topics of potential relevance.
• From this list, Coca-Cola identified the most relevant sustainability topics for the Coca-Cola system – reviewing a broad variety of internal and external stakeholder source documents, including interview transcripts, questionnaires and surveys from direct engagement with its stakeholder groups. The questionnaires Coca-Cola used were from prominent ranking organizations including DJSI, CDP and UNGC. Coca-Cola also reviewed documents that revealed the interests of its investors and the issues identified by its industry peers.
• Coca-Cola held sessions to ensure that face-to-face engagement with diverse groups of stakeholders informed its analysis, including through its collaboration with Ceres.
• Coca-Cola aligned topics to its business and a benchmark of industry peers and global trends.
• Coca-Cola engaged executives across The Coca-Cola Company and received feedback from Finance, Legal, Audit, Technical, Chief Sustainability Office and Public Affairs & Communications, who reviewed and vetted both the process and outcomes.

What actions were taken by Coca-Cola to   promote the sustainability of local water sources everywhere it operates ?

In its 2014/2015 Sustainability Report Coca-Cola set the following targets for promoting the sustainability of local water sources everywhere it operates, based on the company’s approach to materiality – on taking action on what matters, where it matters:

• By 2020, safely returning to communities and nature an amount of water equivalent to what Coca-Cola uses in its finished beverages and their production

Between 2005 and the end of 2014, through 209 community water partnership projects in 61 countries, Coca-Cola balanced an estimated 94 percent of the equivalent amount of water used in its finished beverages (based on 2014 sales volume). This totals approximately 153.6 billion liters of water replenished to communities and nature. In addition to improving water quality, quantity and access, Coca-Cola’s projects often provide additional community benefits, such as helping to improve local livelihoods and mitigate the effects of climate change, including biodiversity loss.

• By 2020, improving water efficiency in manufacturing operations by 25 percent compared with a 2010 baseline

For 12 consecutive years, overall water efficiency in manufacturing throughout the Coca-Cola system has improved. Coca-Cola has achieved this by monitoring water efficiency and following a continuous improvement process across all its facilities. In 2014, Coca-Cola used an average of 2.03 liters of water for each liter of product produced – a 10 percent improvement since 2010 – moving it toward its 2020 goal to use 1.7 liters of water per liter of product.

• Assessing water source risks

Through its water stewardship program, Coca-Cola has implemented a rights-based approach to water. Coca-Cola requires its system’s bottling plants to assess vulnerabilities of the quality and quantity of their community water sources and production water (if they differ); determine potential impacts from Coca-Cola’s water use and discharge of wastewater; and then address the issues identified in the development and implementation of a source water protection plan (SWPP). With its new systemwide database, Coca-Cola has been able to streamline its tracking and reporting process, thereby strengthening its governance ability. As a result, by the end of 2014, all the bottling plants in the system conducted a source water vulnerability assessment and the majority of plants began SWPP implementation. Built in concert with communities and local authorities, these plans help Coca-Cola identify and mitigate risks present in a given area. They address numerous water issues related to the needs and growth of its business and of the communities where Coca-Cola operates. Coca-Cola seeks not only to maintain regulatory compliance, but also to build a Company culture focused on water resource sustainability.

• Recycling and treating water

Coca-Cola continues its commitment to return to the environment – at a level that supports aquatic life –recycled wastewater from its manufacturing process. For all new, existing and acquired facilities, the water Coca-Cola returns is cleaned and treated to meet Coca-Cola’s own high internal standards and achieve full compliance with local regulations. In 2014, Coca-Cola achieved 99 percent alignment with its wastewater treatment standards. A few plants still needed to meet this standard and were delayed due to extenuating circumstances in their region. In order to accelerate improvements to the quality of water Coca-Cola’s facilities recycle and discharge back into the environment, as well as the efficiency with which Coca-Cola processes that water, Coca-Cola is currently transitioning its wastewater governance and technical support programs into a performance-based model. Managing this process is not always easy at facilities in parts of the world experiencing violent conflict, civil unrest and other challenges. Societal conditions sometimes prevent Coca-Cola’s local operations from investing what is required to achieve its goals. However, Coca-Cola supports all of its facilities in their efforts and will continue to do so in the future.

• Engaging bottling partners, government agencies and surrounding communities in India to help replenish water resources

In India, Coca-Cola is employing the Golden Triangle of partnerships by engaging its bottling partners, government agencies and surrounding communities to help replenish water resources. Coca-Cola continues to advance work on a variety of water replenish projects from rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge initiatives to drip irrigation and laser leveling projects with local farmers to improve irrigation efficiency and productivity. Coca-Cola’s success in this region has improved the way it works on water projects in other parts of the world, as it looks to scale and replicate best practices across the Coca-Cola system.

Which GRI indicators/Standards have been addressed?

The GRI indicators/Standards addressed in this case are:

1) G4-EC7: Development and impact of infrastructure investments and services supported – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 203-1 Infrastructure investments and services supported

2) G4-EN8: Total water withdrawal by source – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 303-1 Water withdrawal by source

3) G4-EN22: Total water discharge by quality and destination – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 306-1 Water discharge by quality and destination

4) G4-EN27: Extent of impact mitigation of environmental impacts of products and services

References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Coca-Cola, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) http://www.fbrh.co.uk/en/global-reporting-initiative-gri-g4-guidelines-download-page

3) https://g4.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

4) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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Coca-Cola - replenishing water in the drinks industry

A serious approach to water stewardship is written into the Coca-Cola corporate water strategy, which aims to reduce, recycle and replenish the water the company uses to make its beverages. By 2020, Coca-Cola is aiming to return as much water to nature and to communities as it uses in its drinks.

Coca-Cola's strategy utilises the comprehensive water risk assessments that the company uses to help it understand the water challenges it faces around the world.

The strategy takes in water management at the company's 900 bottling plants and extends to watershed protection, sustainable communities, and raising awareness – with the aim of inspiring other people and companies to act.

Goals are tied into business growth – as the company's business expands so too does its investment in water stewardship.

The judges "highly commended" Coca-Cola in this category.

"We were impressed with the scale of Coca-Cola's ambition" – The Guardian judges

Water is the most important ingredient in Coca-Cola's beverages and is also used for various processes in the manufacturing cycle.

The company's target to reduce its water use ratio is managed through a system-wide water resource sustainability corporate standard. This requires each of its bottling plants to assess the sustainability of water resources used to make its beverages, and those used by the surrounding community.

By 2013 all plants will need to have a source water protection plan in place. The plans address critical water challenges at a watershed level, from hydrological vulnerabilities to local government management.

To meet its goal of replenishing all the water it uses, Coca-Cola invests in community water partnership projects and since 2005, the company has been involved in more than 300 of these.

Benefits from water stewardship include watershed protection and conservation; expanding community drinking water and sanitation access; and improving water for productive use.

The company freely admits that calculating water benefits is in its infancy and hopes that the methodology it is helping to advance will support the ongoing development of this emerging discipline in water conservation.

Advancing the science of water conservation requires multiple, strategic partnerships at every step of the way. Coca-Cola has also joined forces with NGOs and organizations such as the Water Footprint Network, the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund and the Global Environment and Technology Foundation.

The company is also seeking to raise global awareness of the importance of water stewardship and to encourage other businesses in its industry to take action. It has been instrumental in setting up the CEO water mandate, a public-private partnership to help companies develop, implement and disclose water sustainability policies and practices, as well as the beverage industry environmental roundtable and the global water challenge.

At an operational level it is transforming best practice and raising expectations of business responsibility in the treatment of wastewater, introducing the very first wastewater treatment systems in some locations.

With 70% of wastewater in developing countries going untreated, this is clearly a very important step in the company's water stewardship commitment.

Coca-Cola's comprehensive strategy made such an impression on the judges that they thought it likely to become an industry standard.

Highly commending the company's approach, they said: "We were impressed with the scale of Coca-Cola's ambitions and how it actively champions water stewardship. We look forward to seeing this ambition turned into results."

Lorna Thorpe is part of the wordworks network

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Water Stewardship in Coca-Cola’s Worldwide System

About this project.

“I would encourage you – whether you’re in business, government, the nonprofit world or simply a concerned private citizen – to think about ways you might be able to partner with others to create positive change. And then take the first step. You never know how many lives you might touch.”— Muhtar Kent, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company

• The Collaboration
• The Leadership
• The Toolkit

In 2005, the Indian state of Kerala banned the production of Coca-Cola products in the region, due to the company’s excessive use of water and poor record of pollution. It was clear to Coca-Cola that they could improve their water efficiency and overall water stewardship, not only in Kerala but throughout their worldwide operations. Jeff Seabright was hired to head Coca-Cola’s Environmental and Water Resources Group, both for his political acumen and his knowledge of climate change. Jeff used his cross-sector experience to solve the company’s water problem, working with partners from government and non-profit sectors, including World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). All three sectors collaborated to create sustainable hydropower initiatives, improving water accessibility and infrastructure in locations where Coca-Cola operates. His cross-sector approach helped position Coca-Cola as an industry leader in water stewardship.

Jeff addressed Coca-Cola’s water challenge by forming partnerships with government departments and non-profit organizations, leveraging their expertise in order to improve the company’s water efficiency and reduce impact on community watersheds. Jeff’s insight into each sector’s culture, incentives, and resources came from working on environmental issues across multiple sectors, rendering him well-qualified to lead Coca-Cola’s collaborative approach.

Balanced Motivations

Jeff has always been civic-minded: he began in the Foreign Service with the State Department, where he spent 15 years focused on nuclear disarmament and arms control issues, helping to close the Rocky Flats Plant nuclear weapon production facility. He continued working on public policy issues at USAID, building his knowledge of environmental issues, before serving as executive director of the White House Task Force for Climate Change. At Coca-Cola, he introduced water-related performance measures and made responsible water management a system-wide priority.

Prepared Mind

Jeff endured criticisms that he was ‘going to the bad guys’ when Texaco recruited him from the public sector to be the Vice President of Policy Planning. For Jeff, the move from the public to the private sector was an opportunity to work with organizations that could quickly implement and scale solutions to reduce environmental impact.

Transferable Skills

During his time in the public sector, Jeff learned to engage stakeholders and inspire action, even when his priorities differed from those of the leadership. Jeff’s consulting experience at Booz Allen Hamilton and Green Strategies equipped him with the tools to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements.

Intellectual Thread

With experience operating in multiple sectors, Jeff brought discipline and a systematic approach to the ways in which a business could evaluate its environmental impact. His expertise on the environment – particularly on technical elements, regulatory practices, and impacts from manufacturing operations – allowed him to develop a strategic, collaborative approach to water management.

Contextual Intelligence

Jeff’s cross-sector experience taught him the specialized language specific to each sector. For example, in order to build support for water use issues at Coca-Cola, Jeff translated the operational risk of water into a language and practice that made ‘business sense.’ Jeff’s cross-sector experience helped him navigate bureaucracies, manage corporate concerns about risk management, address community grievances, and use the expertise of environmental groups to achieve water efficiency. His understanding of the constraints of different sectors prepared Jeff to direct change through multiple, complex avenues.

Build a common fact base

Under Jeff’s leadership, Coca-Cola designed a questionnaire (eventually completed by 94 percent of its plant operators) from which they created a water risk analysis model. The model, which benefits 23 business units, considers supply reliability, efficiency, compliance, watersheds, and other local factors. Two-day meetings with local operators resulted in ‘buy-in’ on multiple levels. Drawing on expertise from the private sector, Jeff created a water stress map which showed that in Coca-Cola’s operation plants, 39 percent of the company’s volume was produced in water-stressed areas, and that these areas were some of the most financially promising. This presentation of information helped company managers recognize the urgency of addressing water management issues.

Establish transparency of viewpoints

Coca-Cola now produces an annual, publicly available report, which details progress on its commitment to water neutrality and the status of its intersector partnerships, including USAID and WWF, who in turn produce their own commentary on progress in their shared water stewardship.

Communicate the interdependency of each sector

WWF has the expertise to measure water use and to develop water stewardship solutions. Jeff identified the benefits of working with organizations from other sectors, even those that sometimes opposed certain aspects of Coca-Cola’s business. When several national chapters of WWF voiced reservations about working with Cola-Cola, Jeff directly engaged with the skeptics to address their concerns, to discuss issues or to “just compare notes”. This resulted in a stronger appreciation both of how leadership from each sector understood the issue, and of how other sectors viewed Coca-Cola’s role in water-related problems and solutions.

Recruit a powerful sponsor or champion

Coca-Cola’s CEO and Chairman Muhtar Kent refers to business, government, and civil society as ‘The Golden Triangle’, and affirms that a collaborative approach to water stewardship is essential to Coca-Cola’s water efficiency goals. CEO-level support for a cross-sector approach helps Jeff to promote and advance water-related partnerships, both internally and with Coca-Cola’s government and non-profit partners.

Since its recognition of water challenges in Kerala, Coca-Cola has restored full operations in India and is now seen as an industry leader for water stewardship. The company is involved in multiple water initiatives at the global, national and local levels. The company has forged strong relationships with non-profit and government entities (WWF, The Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, United Nations Development Program, USAID and others through the Water and Development Alliance) and continues to improve its water replenishment, reduction, recycling, and risk-management activities. Recent achievements include:

• In 2007, Coca-Cola received USAID’s “Alliance of the Year Award”.
• Coca-Cola’s initial five-year partnership with WWF has been renewed until 2020.
• Coca-Cola’s global water use ratio is down from 2.7 liters of water used per liter of product in 2004 to 2.1 in 2012.
• Coca-Cola is half-way towards its goal of water neutrality by 2020, and is making continuing efforts to improve water efficiency by an additional 25 percent by 2020
• In 2012, the company announced a $5 billion investment in India, marking a restored confidence in, and acceptance by, the Indian market.

clock This article was published more than  5 years ago

How Coca-Cola came to terms with its own water crisis

Editor’s note: This post has been updated. It originally incorrectly suggested that Coke did not have a site in Kerala, India. 

The big idea:  The Coca-Cola Company’s franchise business model has made it both a global and local brand. Despite the global dominance of the Coke brand, its independently owned bottlers make the brand a local business for many communities. For the community of Kerala, India, criticism of the brand became a flashpoint both locally – and globally.  The company was blamed for depleting the local supply of water even in communities where it did not have operations, and even though Coca-Cola said the facts proved otherwise. Ultimately, Kerala became a wake-up call for the company to address its responsibility for water “beyond the four walls of the plant,” said Greg Koch, Coca-Cola’s director of global water stewardship.

The scenario:  Water is a primary ingredient in virtually every Coca-Cola product and is fundamental to its agricultural supply chain. Even in locations where Coca-Cola does not consume local water resources, the brand’s prevalence drives the perception that the company is a large water consumer.

Facing social and environmental challenges regarding its water stewardship in India and elsewhere, Coca-Cola initiated a risk assessment, interviewing constituents inside and outside of the company — customers, supply chain partners, academics, NGOs, governments and industry peers — which led to the “co-discovery” that company action on the state of water was necessary. The risk assessment considered everything associated with water well beyond the factory footprint. In addition to water quality and quality infrastructure, the assessment considered rule of law, freedom of the press and other factors that could influence stresses around water.

More than a technical risk assessment, this was also a social risk assessment. Even in communities using a water source separate from a local Coca-Cola bottler, local franchise management had to understand community water concerns in their source-water protection plans.

The resolution: Atul Singh, a key player in India during the Kerala controversy who became one of Coca-Cola’s group presidents, recommended that the company help build water infrastructure in communities near Coca-Cola plants as well as in places where the company did not operate. “We need to be Coca-Cola — we need to do more than is expected,” Singh explained. Coca-Cola did not mark the new water facilities with the company logo.

Beyond India, Coca-Cola committed to fully replace the water it uses in its finished products across the globe, a goal it set for 2020 and met in 2015.

The lesson:  Coca-Cola recognized that a sustainable approach to water is not “nice to have” but essential to its business. Today, escalating public expectation for businesses to address social concerns is resetting the relationship between business and society. The challenges like climate change, obesity and dwindling natural resources are so complex they demand “we” solutions that go well beyond a company’s four walls.

Carmichael is a fellow and Moriarty is a professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. The case is drawn from “Reset: Business and Society in the New Social Landscape,” by Carmichael and Darden Prof. James Rubin (1951-2016).

Coca-Cola: A Case Study In Sustainability

by Staff Writer | Aug 8, 2011

This article is included in these additional categories:

Coca-Cola ‘s 600,000 square foot facility in Brampton houses the plant, management team, and warehouse. It has three plastic bottling lines, including a Dasani line; one bag-in-box line producing syrup for national accounts; one pre-mix line for the restaurant business, and one canning line. There are 650 plant operators, sales and equipment service representatives, truck drivers, warehouse employees, management and staff.

Located within the eco-business zone around Toronto Pearson International Airport, Coca-Cola in Brampton joins the local community of businesses to collaborate on green projects. Under the stewardship of Partners in Project Green , businesses participate in programs to reduce energy and resource costs, uncover new business opportunities, and address everyday operational challenges in a green and cost-effective manner. Other companies in this program include Xerox, Unilever , FedEx, Hewlett-Packard , Walmart , Kraft, and LoyaltyOne .

Social and environmental risks are now one of seven business risk categories and are formally embedded into Coca-Cola’s enterprise risk management process . This in turn guides the business processes, including annual planning, three-year business planning, and internal audit planning. As a result, sustainability decisions are becoming an integral part of the business decision making, commercialization and capital management processes, the three-year business planning process, and customer and supplier relationships. Highlighted here are some of their goals, implementation, and progress.

Energy Conservation and Climate Change

The goal is to reduce the overall carbon footprint of our business operations by 15 percent by 2020, as compared to the 2007 baseline.

The Brampton operation converted to an energy efficient lighting system that uses 50% less energy and provides 50% more light. These new fixtures also operate on motion sensors for even greater savings.

In the distribution channels, the company has installed 2000 EMS-55 energy management devices in vending machines. These devices activate lights and adjust cooling based on use, leading to improved energy efficiency by up to 35 percent.

In addition, the company installed 1,400 climate-friendly coolers at the 2010 Olympic Games to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 5,600 metric tons, the equivalent of taking about 1,200 cars off the road for an entire year.

Finally, 37 heavy-duty hybrid delivery trucks and tractors were introduced to the Canadian fleet in 2008 and 2009. These vehicles improve fuel consumption and reduce emissions by about one third and create less noise and emissions when stopped in traffic.

Water Usage

The goal is to establish a water-sustainable operation to minimize water use and have a water-neutral impact on the local communities by safely returning the amount of water used in the beverages to the local communities and environment.

A 20% reduction in water use, accompanied by an efficiency ratio of 1.62 litres was achieved between 2005 and 2007. Plant teams focused on: 1) reducing the water use ratio; and 2) recycling the water used in operations (wastewater treatment).

To help reach its water usage goals the company developed and used a water conservation toolkit to identify actions that would conserve water. It implemented recycle and reclaim water loops through the plant’s membrane water treatment system. And it installed a new osmotic water recovery system designed to reclaim nearly 11 million litres of water for production. In addition water based container rinsers were replaced with ionized air rinsers and the lubrication system on all production lines was retrofitted to discontinue water use, saving approximately 28 million litres of water annually.

Sustainable Packaging and Recycling

The goals are to: (1) avoid the use of 100,000 metric tons of packaging materials between 2007 and 2010, (2) recycle or recover more than 90% of waste materials at production facilities by 2010, (3) increase recycled content in plastic (PET) bottles to an average of 10% by 2010.

For goal (1), Dasani PET bottle weight was reduced by 30%, saving 493 metric tons of PET. Plastic twist-off closures were designed 24% lighter, saving 235 metric tons of resin. Also, lighter fibreboard was developed for Minute Maid products saving 124 metric tons of fiberboard annually. The company also launched the PlantBottle, a 100% recyclable packaging made with up to 30% plant-based waste materials.

Goal (2) was achieved in 2009, ahead of schedule. The team also implemented a centralized recycling initiative that captures broken, damaged or expired product packaging from satellite facilities to be baled and sold to an industrial recycler.

Investments were made to achieve green innovations in recycling technologies, renewable packaging materials, vending and cooling equipment controls and design, and hybrid trucks.

Among the tools used was a proprietary packaging database to identify opportunities for future packaging material reductions and to benchmark performance against the global Coca-Cola system. See here for more on sustainable packaging .

The Coca-Cola operation in Brampton has shown that there are advantages to thinking “outside the box”. By respecting the finite nature of the earth’s water and resources the operation is implementing innovative business practices and contributing to the sustainability of communities while meeting the expectations of its stakeholders.

Derek Wong is a Toronto based sustainability consultant. See contact info and more posts like this at Carbon49.com. This case study is based in part on material provided by Partners in Project Green. Photos courtesy of Partners in Project Green.

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Coca-Cola case study - For want of natural resources

Strategy & leadership.

Social Share:

_____________________

Companies in North America, as in other regions of the world, tend to place risks related to water, such as floods and drought, and more general risks related to climate change, near the bottom of their priority list. Some organisations, however, are starting to consider one of the potential issues arising from climate change - water scarcity - more carefully. One company that takes this very seriously is Coca-Cola. It is hardly surprising that scarcity and poor quality of water” is reported as a strategic risk by the company. Water is the main ingredient in most of its products, but it is only since 2003 that the issue of water quality and availability has become a significant enough risk to hit the corporate radar at a strategic level.

This risk is now addressed systematically by the company. In 2004, Coca-Cola launched a comprehensive water initiative, assessing availability at plant-level operations in the 200 countries in which it operates and across its almost 1,000 franchised bottling plants.

The risks that the company has identified go beyond physical water scarcity. “Whether it’s aging infrastructure in the US or the lack of municipal water and sanitation services, you can have a water scarcity issue that might have nothing to do with the physical amount of water available,” explains Greg Koch, head of the global water stewardship programme at Coca-Cola.

The company has developed modelling tools to help it forecast a variety of water-risk scenarios and tackle its water use more effectively. Part of this has meant continuing efforts to reduce consumption, treat and reuse water where possible and ensure that waste-water is safe and clean.

Although these measures have helped Coca-Cola to manage its own water consumption more efficiently, they have also highlighted the importance of considering external factors, such as the health of global watersheds and conservation of the world’s freshwater resources. “What really came out of the risk assessment was that it was no longer enough to focus on the four walls of the plant,” says Jeff Seabright, head of environment and water resources at Coca-Cola.

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Steering through collaboration: CFOs driving new priorities for the future

It is well established that the modern CFO has a more strategic role to play in a business, but a clear action plan to achieve this is lacking. A key element of this is helping the business to deal with change. Some changes are planned: launching a new product or service, setting up operations in a new region or acquiring a competitor. Others may be unexpected: a major disruption to supply-chain operations, the emergence of new regulation and legal reporting requirements or the unpredictable impacts of global economic uncertainty.

Either way, when asked about the biggest challenges they face in executing their day-to-day activities, change is a recurring theme, according to a new survey of 800 CFOs and senior finance executives, conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit. Managing unexpected changes to financial forecasts and adapting finance processes to rapidly evolving business models are top of mind.

Managing unexpected changes to financial forecasts and adapting finance processes to rapidly evolving business models are top challenges finance executives face in executing their day to-day activities.

Finance executives are also concerned with identifying how to align strategic, financial and operational plans towards common objectives and meaningfully analysing data across business units and regions. “All functions are working to meet these challenges and, as a finance head, we have to have visibility across all functions, how they are progressing [towards meeting goals] and ensuring that their direction is in line with overall strategic goals,” says Lalit Malik, CFO of Dabur, an Indian consumer goods manufacturer. It is incumbent upon CFOs therefore to be prepared not only to help their own function navigate uncharted territory, but the rest of the business too. That means breaking down the silos that commonly exist in organisations, in order to collaborate closely across functions, sharing information and data in the pursuit of common objectives.

All functions are working to meet these challenges and, as a finance head, we have to have visibility across all functions, how they are progressing [towards meeting goals] and ensuring that their direction is in line with overall strategic goals - Lalit Malik, CFO of Dabur, an Indian consumer goods manufacturer.

The clear custodian of collaboration

There are a number of reasons why the role of leading cross-company collaboration around steering should fall to the CFO and their team. First, through the activities of budgeting, the finance function is the custodian of the clear, quantitative expression of management expectations and determines how resources such as cash and people will be allocated in order to achieve them. In our survey, 90% of respondents say that finance should facilitate collaborative enterprise planning to ensure that operational plans are aligned with financial and strategic plans.

Second, through performance management, the finance function is the gatekeeper for critical data that illustrate how well—or otherwise—the company is rising to the challenge of change. That includes data relating to sales, supply chain and delivery, which need to be reported back to the business in ways that help drive improved decisionmaking. Our survey reveals that companies in which finance executives feel empowered to drive strategic decisions across business functions are more likely to report a higher financial performance in fiscal year 2016/17 and 2017/18 and anticipate higher growth rates for 2019/20.

Transforming data into action

As businesses generate and manage vast amounts of data, companies have more opportunities to gather data, incorporate insights into business strategy and continuously expand access to data across the organisation. Doing so effectively—leveraging data for strategic objectives—is often easier said than done, however. This report, Transforming data into action: the business outlook for data governance, explores the business contributions of data governance at organisations globally and across industries, the challenges faced in creating useful data governance policies and the opportunities to improve such programmes. Learn more by downloading our whitepaper below. 

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Case Studies

The coca-cola company: building a climate-resilient value chain, july 9, 2018.

The Coca-Cola Company has been working to reduce emissions in its supply chain for years—including not only those associated with bottling, but also those associated with growing ingredients, producing packaging, and distributing and refrigerating products. As climate change impacts have begun to manifest around the globe, the 132-year-old company partnered with BSR to take this work a step further to examine what climate risk and resilience might mean for The Coca-Cola Company value chain.

The Challenge

From agricultural ingredients, like citrus and tea, to hyper-local distribution systems, The Coca-Cola Company supply chain is one of the largest and most complex in the world. Coca-Cola products are sold in more than 200 countries and territories, and each of those markets faces unique exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

Mitigation efforts—those focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions—are vital to any company’s climate strategy and critical to global efforts to avoid unmanageable climate impacts. As the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt around the world, however, it has become clear that simultaneous efforts are necessary to increase adaptive capacity and build resilience.

“Resilience” is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.” In the context of climate change, resilience is the ability of a system (such as a bottling plant, distribution network, or supply chain) or community to rebound following a shock such as a natural disaster. Building resilience requires not only recognizing potential hazards like extreme weather events, but also understanding the underlying vulnerabilities that may affect recovery from these potential disasters. For example, insufficient infrastructure can reduce a community’s capacity to rebound following a disruption like an extreme weather event, as can poverty or gender inequality.

After years focused on climate mitigation and water stewardship, understanding climate risk and resilience was a natural next step for Coca-Cola.

Our Strategy

BSR partnered with Coca-Cola to begin building the foundation for a more resilient company that is better able to anticipate, avoid, accommodate, and recover from climate risks in the future. At the outset, we identified seven markets—Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, Mexico, and the United States—and two commodities—coffee and tea—to serve as proxies for the full Coca-Cola value chain. For each of these markets and commodities, we explored exposure to major climate hazards in the context of underlying vulnerabilities, such as rapid urbanization, at-risk populations, food and economic insecurity, and insufficient infrastructure.

Using this analysis, a benchmark of climate resilience activities in the food and beverage sector, Coca-Cola’s existing risk mitigation strategy, and insights from internal company interviews, we developed a framework for identifying and prioritizing climate-related risks. We then mapped Coca-Cola’s existing programs and initiatives to high-priority risks and outlined an approach for expanding this work further across the company’s major business units.

Our Outcomes and Impact

The climate resilience framework we developed aims to integrate resilience into Coca-Cola’s existing strategy, risk management, and sustainability systems. The framework is designed to connect and amplify The Coca-Cola Company’s efforts in empowering women, protecting the climate, and sustainably sourcing ingredients, as well as in water leadership and community development. Over time, we hope to see the framework used to help Coca-Cola create a more resilient value chain, enabling the company to confidently source responsibly cultivated ingredients, withstand or promptly recover from climate-related impacts, identify and reduce climate risks, and contribute to building value chain and community resilience where Coca-Cola is produced and sold.

We hope that these leading-edge efforts will inspire other companies, as well as their partners in the public sector and civil society, to take a more holistic look at climate risk in their value chains and communities and identify opportunities to build adaptive capacity and resilience.

Lessons Learned

Undertaking this work with Coca-Cola allowed us to translate what we know about climate risk and resilience into the context of a global supply chain. Here are a few suggestions for companies interested in exploring climate risk and resilience in their value chains:

• Start small : Begin with a selection of facilities, locations, or products that represent important aspects of your business. This will allow you to identify the most useful and important data points before scaling your approach across the organization.
• Integrate into existing systems : Rather than approaching climate risk and resilience as a new, standalone exercise, consider integrating climate considerations into existing risk management and/or sustainability systems.
• Appreciate both the global and the local : Much like water stewardship, managing climate risk and building resilience is both a global and intensely local challenge. While some tenets and approaches can be broadly applied, individual interventions must be customized and reflect on-the-ground realities.

Learn more about our work on climate-resilient supply chains .

Member Company

The Coca-Cola Company

• Supply Chain
• Food, Beverage, and Agriculture
• Consumer Products
• Climate Change

Let’s talk about how BSR can help you to transform your business and achieve your sustainability goals .

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Back to Case Studies

Coke claims to give back as much water as it uses. An investigation shows it isn’t even close

By Christine MacDonald

Illustrations by James O’Brien

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When Coca-Cola announced plans earlier this year to recycle the equivalent of 100 percent of its packaging by 2030, the company touted the effort as building on its success with sustainable water use. In a 2016 full-page ad published in The New York Times, the company proclaimed, “For every drop we use, we give one back,” boasting on its website that it was “the first Fortune 500 company to hit such an aggressive target.” But a year of reporting into Coca-Cola’s water program shows that the company is grossly exaggerating its water record, which suggests that its new “World Without Waste” recycling plan should also be viewed with skepticism.

Coca-Cola came under fire for its water practices in the mid-2000s. (The company did not answer specific questions, but it did issue a lengthy statement for this article.) Coca-Cola keeps distribution costs low by tapping local water sources, a practice it has continued since the company’s early success at Atlanta-area soda fountains in the late 1800s. By the 2000s, however, local people in some of the world’s increasingly water-stressed regions were looking more critically at big water users, and Coca-Cola found itself a target of public ire. By 2007, US college students took up the cause, calling for a nationwide boycott in support of Indian farmers who accused the company of stealing their water and livelihoods. It was an international PR nightmare that threatened Coca-Cola’s brand image and global business strategy.

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute .

E. Neville Isdell, Coke’s CEO at the time, took heed.

“Today,” he said from a podium at a 2007 World Wildlife Fund conference in Beijing, “the Coca-Cola Company pledges to replace every drop of water we use in our beverages and their production to achieve balance in communities and in nature with the water we use.” The idea was to make Coke’s operations “water neutral.” That year, the company pledged to reach this goal by 2020. 

Key findings

• Coca-Cola claims that for every drop the company uses, it gives one back. But “every drop” includes only what goes into the bottle.
• The company does not count water in its supply chain — including the water-guzzling sugar crop — in its “every drop” math.
• In a report, Coca-Cola acknowledged that the water used in production was “a very small percentage of the total water footprint.”
• In 2008, Coca-Cola conducted an assessment of a factory and found it took 35 liters of water to make every half-liter of Coke. The researcher who worked on that assessment says the company pressured him to adopt a “net green” accounting method that would have lowered the water footprint of its agricultural supply chain.
• The company has been criticized for the science behind elements of its replenishment program that “offset” its water use.
• Coca-Cola gives millions of dollars to environmental groups that assess the efficacy of its water replenishment plans.
• Coca-Cola pledged to become “a truly water-sustainable business on a global scale” in 2007. Eleven years later, by the standards of the 2008 assessment, the company still has nearly 99 percent of its water footprint to go.

From the start, everything hinged on how “every drop” and “water neutral” would be defined. The expression “water neutrality” first appeared at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, the brainchild of South African businessman Pancho Ndebele. Like a carbon offset program, it offered delegates a way to counterbalance their water consumption by purchasing credits to be invested in water efficiency initiatives and expanded clean water access. After the summit, Ndebele set up the Water Neutral Foundation to take the concept forward, but it struggled to earn credibility with the scientific community, which criticized “water neutrality” as a misleading term that lacked a rigorous method for assessing water use and offsets and suggested the world’s water problems could be solved with a few charitable contributions.

A water-use accounting method arrived that same year when Dutch scientist Arjen Hoekstra created the Water Footprint, a method of totaling the water that goes into everything we consume. His Water Footprint counted not only the water used in the factory, but also what’s needed to grow the raw materials, create the packaging, and everything else that goes into each product. Water Footprint assessments grabbed the world’s attention by publicizing the mind-boggling amounts of water it takes to make even our humblest everyday necessities. Take a single T-shirt: it takes 712 gallons of water to produce, mostly because of the water needed to grow the cotton. A quarter-pound hamburger requires 462 gallons of water if you take into account the water required to grow the cattle feed. Whole countries and corporations can calculate their own Water Footprints. People can, too: in the United States, we have a per capita Water Footprint of 2,060 gallons a day .

The Water Footprint challenged people and companies to think more critically about water usage. Water “neutrality” expanded water ambitions beyond the environmental mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle . The two concepts seemed to go hand in hand, and Hoekstra began working on a Water Neutral Calculator for Ndebele’s foundation. By tying water neutrality to Hoekstra’s methodology for accurately measuring Water Footprints, Hoekstra and Ndebele hoped people and companies would use the calculator to invest in nature conservation projects that could, at least in theory, restore water that could not be reduced or recycled. 

Coca-Cola statement /

Coca-Cola didn’t respond to specific questions, but it did offer a general statement.

Greg Koch, then a Coca-Cola executive tasked with global water stewardship, contacted Hoekstra. Two weeks after Isdell’s speech in Beijing, Koch and Hoekstra met at a cafe in Amsterdam.

“It was exciting for me,” recalled Hoekstra, who had taken a train from Enschede, a city 100 miles east of Amsterdam on Holland’s German border, where he works as a professor and researcher at the University of Twente.

Hoekstra was thrilled at the idea of helping Coca-Cola genuinely assess and reduce water usage in every part of its supply chain — not only the water used in its bottling plants, but also the amount it took to grow the sugar and other ingredients and to produce every plastic bottle and aluminum can. Today, the World Health Organization reports that half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025; by 2030, the United Nations predicts water stress will give way to water shortages for nearly half the people on the planet. Back in 2007, Hoekstra and other experts were already sounding the alarm. Hoekstra thought Coca-Cola was ready to come to grips with reality. But Coke would follow a different plan.

At first, the idea seemed to be gaining momentum. In Beijing, Isdell had said the company would not start with water used in its supply chain but would address it eventually. “We recognize that becoming ‘water neutral’ in our operations does not address the issue of embedded water in our agricultural ingredients and packaging materials. Working with WWF, we will seek opportunities to reduce water use in our supply chain, beginning with sugar,” Isdell told the audience. He went on to say, “Our aim, ultimately, is to establish a truly water-sustainable business on a global scale.” The company’s next moves suggested it was considering an even more transformative overhaul of its operations, including its supply chain.

After the first meeting between Koch and Hoekstra, Coca-Cola commissioned three Water Footprint assessments at a plant in Holland from Hoekstra’s team of researchers. The meeting in Amsterdam also led to a series of gatherings called the Water Neutral Working Group. In attendance at the first meeting were Hoekstra, Ndebele, and executives from Coke, World Wildlife Fund, and several international agencies. Representatives from Nestlé, Ikea, beverage maker SABMiller, and other corporations, along with The Nature Conservancy, put in appearances at subsequent meetings in Europe and the US.

“For every drop we use, we give one back.”

“We started by reviewing the concept of water footprinting and discussing how this relates to business, on the assumption that this will provide the basis for water neutrality calculations” with the objective of seeing what “might be developed in the coming 6-12 months in a credible and open process,” according to the minutes of the first Water Neutral Working Group meeting in September 2007. Around the same time, water neutrality and the Water Footprint headlined at international businesses conferences; JPMorgan featured the Water Footprint in a 2008 report on corporate water risk; and companies began to commission Water Footprint Assessments.

“There was a real buzz,” said Derk Kuiper, a Dutch conservationist and former World Wildlife Fund staffer who chaired the Water Neutral Working Group. 

But according to Ndebele and Kuiper, there was reluctance among executives in the room to face the truly enormous consumption of water in one area: corporate supply chains, which Ndebele recalled as “the elephant in the room.” From the very first conversation, Hoekstra recalled, Coca-Cola executives recognized the water needs of its agricultural ingredients; agriculture, Hoekstra said, can contribute to more than 90 percent of water consumption in some places. ( The Verge asked Coca-Cola why the company excluded its supply chain from its original plan to replenish all the water it takes to make its products, but the company did not respond.)

There was reluctance among executives in the room to face the truly enormous consumption of water in one area: corporate supply chains

“Particularly in the food and beverage sectors, they understood that at the end of the day the largest user of water is agriculture. And inevitably your water footprint was going to be a lot bigger because of that particular segment,” Ndebele said. “But I think what was a challenge initially, people were happy ... not actually to attend to it.” Ndebele had previously worked as a sustainable development manager for SABMiller, the London-based multinational brewing and beverage company that was one of Coca-Cola’s largest bottling partners. (SABMiller is now part of a new company called Newbelco.)

Kuiper recalled growing misgivings among corporate executives in the group. “Many organizations started doing these initial calculations, and found out that … for supply chain Water Footprints, if you are a company with an agricultural supply chain, these are huge, these water footprints,” he said. “There’s not enough water to go around” — meaning there aren’t enough viable offset projects to actually balance corporate agricultural water footprints.  

Take the Water Footprint assessments Hoekstra and his team carried out for Coca-Cola beginning in 2008. When Coca-Cola publicly released the report in September 2010, it revealed that it takes 35 liters of water to make every half-liter of Coke in Holland. Most of that water (28 liters) was used primarily to grow sugar beets to sweeten the beverage. It took another seven liters to make the PET plastic bottle, plus a total of 0.4 liters of “operational water,” which is the water used in its bottling plants to manufacture each half-liter of product. “[T]he operational water footprint associated with production was found to be a very small percentage of the total water footprint,” the report stated.

“There’s not enough water to go around.”

Coca-Cola told The Verge that the company’s “ultimate goal is to more sustainably source 100% of our key agricultural ingredients” and that it works with its suppliers to improve. “We believe we have made good progress in this area but acknowledge it is a journey,” the company wrote in its statement for this article.

As the enormity of the task the company had set for itself sunk in, Coca-Cola and other working group members pressured Hoekstra to allow them to engage in an act of water accounting sleight of hand that would shave off nearly half of the Water Footprint for every half-liter of Coke, according to people at the meetings.

With one move, adopting “net green” water use rather than fully “green” water use could have wiped out 43 percent of Dutch Coke’s water footprint. A water footprint using “net green” would subtract the amount of water natural vegetation might need if, say, a sugar plantation hadn’t replaced it. In cases where pre-existing natural vegetation absorbed more water than the crop that replaced it, “net green” held out the possibility of reducing a company’s overall water footprint despite industrial-scale farming’s links to water pollution and other water sustainability issues. The Verge asked Coca-Cola about requesting that calculations be based on “net green” for water usage, but the company did not respond.

“There was a general push from the beverage companies toward ‘net green,’ and the issue also popped up specifically when we were doing our report,” Hoekstra said, referring to the Water Footprint Assessments created for the company. “It felt like a victory when finally Coke accepted our report despite the general pressure within the [beverage] sector and Coke itself to change to net green.”

After Hoekstra refused Coca-Cola’s request to substitute the “green” for “net green” in his Water Footprint methodology, the company never moved forward with a Water Footprint of The Coca-Cola Company’s global enterprise, limiting its attention to only the water that goes into each bottle. According to Koch, speaking on behalf of the company two years ago, there was no need since Hoekstra’s work had already confirmed their “intuition” about the amount of water embedded in its supply chain.

Even as it became clear that the company would never get close to reaching “water neutrality” in its comprehensive meaning, Coca-Cola pushed on with its high-profile water-offset program in 2007, pledging to replace “every drop” of water used in its beverages. With The Nature Conservancy and other technical experts, the company devised a framework for evaluating projects and assessing how many liters each would “return” to nature in order to achieve company’s promise of returning “every drop” of water used to make its beverages.

The company invests in three main types of projects. Its water and sanitation investments are designed to expand basic services in poor communities in Africa and elsewhere through well digging, water purification projects, and water distribution and metering systems. The company also funds “productive use” projects geared toward increasing water conservation and reuse and increasing the water supply for irrigation. Finally, there are watershed protection and restoration projects, which run the gamut from tree planting and stormwater management to high-tech irrigation projects designed to reduce the number of water crops need to grow.

The company told The Verge that “The Coca-Cola Company and our bottling partners have long believed that we must conduct our business more sustainably and grow responsibly” and that it has to work with its partners to achieve that. It also said that “[u]ltimately, our goal is to help protect and conserve water resources, and bring safe drinking water and sanitation to people in the communities we serve.”

The nearly 2 billion liters of water the company offset in 2015 cover little more than its “operational water”

Since many of the projects were expected to improve water conditions over several years, the company came up with rules for documenting multiyear “credits,” and it continues to report its progress in an annual Water Replenishment Report (along with an annual Sustainability Report ), complete with hundreds of pages of fact sheets and technical footnotes. Coca-Cola told The Verge that it has invested in improving wastewater treatment, water-use efficiency, and addressing “local needs and challenges.”

However, the nearly 2 billion liters of water the company offset in 2015 cover little more than its “operational water,” that “very small percentage” of its Water Footprint, according to the company’s own words a few years earlier in the Dutch report. Specifically, when it refers to returning “every drop,” it’s essentially referring only to the water that actually fits into each bottle or can of its beverages — the 0.5 liters in every half-liter bottle of Coke, which actually takes 35 liters of water to produce, according to the Water Footprint Assessment completed at that Holland factory. Coca-Cola didn’t respond to questions from The Verge about whether it considers itself water neutral today or about the distinction between operational and total water use.

Furthermore, many of Coca-Cola’s offsets projects face questions about whether they deliver the benefits Coke claims. Perhaps the most serious allegation dogging the company’s conservation spending is over whether it properly vets projects to ensure they’re supported by science. The company didn’t answer detailed questions about these criticisms, which have been raised by scientists in Mexico.

When it refers to returning “every drop,” it’s referring only to the water that actually fits into each bottle

In Mexico, Coca-Cola and one of its bottlers financed forestry work that included the digging of trenches similar to ones used in farming. These infiltration trenches were meant to ensure sufficient water to the saplings. Coca-Cola has publicly taken credit for helping finance more than an estimated 5 million trenches in national parks and other forests around Mexico. However, these projects have come under fire for causing damage to some of the country’s most iconic national parks.  

The Mexican government’s forestry commission, Conafor, discontinued the use of these trenches more than three years ago in some parts of the country. Scientific studies have concluded the practice did not improve growing conditions, but it did increase erosion and forest degradation. The lead author of the studies, Dr. Helena Cotler of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told The Verge that she brought the problems to an executive who was in charge of community services for Coca-Cola de Mexico (a subsidiary of the Atlanta-based parent company) in 2014. The next year, a Mexican conservationist appeared in a YouTube video calling out Coca-Cola and other corporations that funded the trench work. In response, Cotler said the executive told her the company discontinued funding for trenches in 2015. (Coca-Cola did not respond to questions about whether it had discontinued trench funding.)

Nevertheless, in Coke’s most recent replenishment report, published in April 2017, the company continued to count these discredited projects each year toward its worldwide replenishment tally through 2023. It is not an insignificant quantity. Of the total 221.7 billion liters of water that Coca-Cola estimates it restored to nature worldwide in 2016, the 13 billion liters the company attributes to the Mexican trench projects equals nearly 6 percent of its worldwide replenishment claims and about 7.5 percent of its worldwide watershed protection investments. 

According to the company, the 191.9 billion liters returned “to nature” in 2015 allowed the company to achieve “balance” five years ahead of schedule

Those accounting issues didn’t stop the company from announcing in 2016 that it had reached its water neutrality goal. “For every drop we use, we give one back,” heralded Coke’s press release. According to the company, the 191.9 billion liters returned “to nature” in 2015 had allowed the company to achieve “balance” — water neutrality — five years ahead of schedule.

Since then, the company has tallied every liter it says it’s saved, and it reported water offsets worth a total of 221 billion liters in 2016, or “133 percent” of its global sales volume. But looking at its broader Water Footprint, this number represents only slightly more than its “operational water,” not the water that goes into the supply chain. Going by the one full Water Footprint study the company conducted, nearly 99 percent of its water use is left unaccounted for — possibly more, considering that not all of the company’s offset projects actually “return” water to nature, by the company’s own admission.

Nearly 99 percent of its water use is left unaccounted for

“In most cases water access and improved sanitation projects result in an actual increase in local water use and it may seem counterintuitive to pursue these types of projects as a balance to industrial consumptive use,” according to a 2013 paper written by Coca-Cola executives and affiliated consultants explaining how its water offset program works. The paper goes on to say that the company nonetheless believes that such added water use is not necessarily bad, as long as it is used in an equitable and sustainable way. Despite the lack of actual “replenishment,” last year, the company said these water and sanitation projects offset a total of 12.2 billion liters per year.

Even Koch, who led the water-offset program for Coca-Cola before leaving the company last year, acknowledged that some of the projects — particularly drinking water projects —mitigate social, economic, and environmental risks but often increase water withdrawals in some places by making it easier for people to access water.

“It does not mean in this context in all cases necessarily that you are actually replenishing water,” Koch said. But, he added, “I would say that the vast majority of the volume of water reported is truly replenished.”

If the sustainability value of Coke’s offset projects is sometimes doubtful, a remarkable number of these investments further other business needs of the company in the 900 or so communities around the world where it relies on local water supplies to make its products. 

One of the most efficient ways Coke ensures access to water is by partnering with the government agencies that serve as gatekeepers to the world’s best water sources. Since 2007, according to Koch, the company participated in about $1 billion in nature conservation, infrastructure, and water and sanitation projects in more than 100 countries in partnership with government and international agencies and nonprofit groups. (When asked about these investments, Coca-Cola told The Verge it had “invested approximately $2 billion” — half on wastewater upgrades to its plants and the rest on water efficiency investments and community water projects. It did not address the question of whether some of that money was provided by its partners.)

Such projects have been accused of privileging the company’s water access over that of local populations. For instance, the Houston-based nonprofit Living Water International, which received Coca-Cola money through a coalition of nonprofit groups, faced accusations of attempting to carry out backdoor privatization of public water resources that could have driven up water prices in the Mexican town of Ocotepec. ( The moves sparked protests , and the organization did not complete the project. When asked about the criticism, Coca-Cola did not respond.)

A remarkable number of these investments further other business needs

Finally, the water project puts Coca-Cola in partnership with a broad array of environmental groups, resulting in large payouts to institutions whose missions are to raise alarms about unsustainable water use, among other issues. Coca-Cola has put millions of dollars into just about every independent environmental organization to help with, and do assessments of, its water replenishment program. Coke has spent tens of millions of dollars on water efficiency and access projects in partnerships with groups ranging from the UN Development Program to the US Agency for International Development, making it a darling of the organizations that track corporate citizenship.

Among the better-known nature groups the company has partnered with is the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In Isdell’s 2007 Beijing speech, he announced that Coca-Cola was giving $20 million to WWF to carry out conservation work, and the company has continued to work with WWF since then. The WWF-US praised Coca-Cola for its forward-thinking approach and said its replenishment targets represent “a step in the right direction,” but it did not answer questions about what role it played in helping the company define water neutrality.

Neither Coca-Cola nor The Nature Conservancy (TNC) disclosed the total amount of money the company gave to the nonprofit to carry out conservation work and what TNC described as providing “counsel on a variety of issues,” including helping the company develop the methodology it uses for the production of the unwieldy “quantifying” report Coca-Cola publishes annually to share its water-related good works. But the company has made multiple donations to support the organization’s work, including a $2 million grant from The Coca-Cola Foundation to support freshwater restoration projects and nearly $7.4 million for replenishment from the company’s Latin American division and its bottlers.

The water project puts Coca-Cola in partnership with a broad array of environmental groups

The organizations’ leaders have also offered effusive and public praise of the company. “Our partnership with Coca-Cola has set the gold standard,” according to Carter Roberts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund-US, while TNC president and CEO Mark Tercek, was quoted in Food Processing magazine in 2015 saying: “Coca-Cola’s commitment to water underscores that investing in nature can produce very positive returns for businesses and local communities.”

In a statement from TNC, Kari Vigerstol, director of TNC’s Conservation for Water Funds, told The Verge :

“Coca-Cola has been a leader in the stewardship of water and has set an incredibly ambitious goal of reducing its water footprint, supporting watershed restoration projects, and increasing access to safe drinking water for communities. … We need to embrace collaboration and innovation with the private sector to achieve the level of change that is necessary for agriculture, energy, water security.”

WWF did not answer questions about what role it played in helping the company define water neutrality or whether Coca-Cola had achieved water neutrality. But TNC did acknowledge that “it’s nearly impossible to make a scientific case for ‘water neutrality’ in a similar sense as carbon neutrality,” even if “companies may choose to discuss ‘water neutrality’ since it is a way to communicate to consumers what they’re trying to do,” according to the statement from Vigerstol. It should be noted that Vigerstol was part of a team of authors that included Coca-Cola executives, who, in a 2013 paper, appeared to define water neutrality as achievable without including supply chain water. (The paper did, however, recommend expanding the “scope of the strategy” to “encompass the entire value chain of the enterprise.”) Such a definition would have been at odds with the Water Neutral Calculator Hoekstra and Ndebele had unveiled at World Water Week in 2008.

The scientists, however, are far less impressed.

Hoekstra parted ways with Coca-Cola in 2008. But the company has continued to tout its water achievements; earlier this year, it embarked on a new “World Without Waste” initiative to tackle packaging. Coke described its promise to use 50 percent recycled content and to recycle “the equivalent” of 100 percent of packaging by 2030, a bid, the company said, to usher in a “circular economy.”

”Together, we might be able to make it zero” waste, James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s president and CEO, said in a January op-ed launching the initiative.

Criticisms have already arisen. In an editorial about the new project, John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, derided the company’s packaging pledge as a familiar smoke screen. He also likened the company’s frequent sustainability announcements and public awareness campaigns to a covert advertising program that overlooks what he calls the company’s “meagre” environmental standards and failure to meet past sustainability goals. Sauven also accused the company of announcing splashy packaging pledges, only to abandon them later, a charge reminiscent of the company’s water neutrality work a decade ago, when Coca-Cola assessed the Water Footprint of its PET plastic bottles (part of the work conducted by Hoekstra at the Dutch plant) but never moved forward with offsetting water in its packaging.

“Coke is symptomatic of the economy that is ecologically unsound.”

The waste initiative hasn’t been completely panned. The company’s pledge to recycle the equivalent of every bottle and can of its products has been well-received by many in the environmental community. However, despite talk of a “circular economy,” the company’s new 2030 packaging targets look weak next to those of other Fortune 500 companies. McDonald’s , for instance, says 100 percent of its packaging will be made with “renewable, recycled, or certified sources” by 2025. With its own plan, Coca-Cola hopes to get halfway there by 2030.

Hoekstra, who said he was overly optimistic a decade ago, now thinks it was “a breakthrough that a big company did a first water footprint assessment and shared that publicly” in 2010. Rather than offsetting more water, he’d like Coca-Cola to get serious about reducing the water needs of its products. “My hope and expectation is that companies will sooner or later formulate water footprint reduction targets that include targets for their supply chain,” he said.

When Isdell started the company down the path to water neutrality more than a decade ago, he told the audience in Beijing: “Our aim, ultimately, is to establish a truly water-sustainable business on a global scale.” What they’ve done instead is perpetuate “Coca-Cola Capitalism,” said historian Bartow J. Elmore, author of the 2015 book, Citizen Coke. “It’s such a 19th century economic model. Perpetual growth — the endless pursuit of selling more products next year than you did last year: A fifth grader could tell you that’s not sustainable,” Elmore said. “Coke is symptomatic of the economy that is ecologically unsound.”

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

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SUSTAINABILITY

Our Planet Matters

Our sustainability strategy guides how we support and engage the remarkable people behind our brands—from farmers and employees, to bottling partners and suppliers, to customers and consumers, to the communities we call home—and helps us make progress on our goals to help safeguard the environment. 

The Coca‑Cola Company Launches 100% Recycled Plastic Bottles* Across Canada

Coca‑Cola Canada announces a groundbreaking initiative to produce all 500mL sparkling beverage bottles using 100% recycled plastic (excluding caps and labels) by early 2024. This marks a significant step towards a circular economy, supporting sustainability goals and reducing CO2 emissions.

*Excluding caps and labels

Our Sustainability Areas of Focus

• Climate Action

We believe in reducing our own greenhouse gas emissions and building resilience through investments to enable our businesses and communities to adapt to climate change.

• Water Stewardship

Our water strategy focuses on water security through local replenishment (returning water to communities and nature), advocacy for smart water policies, and responsible and efficient water use throughout our operations and in the communities we serve. 

• Sustainable Packaging

We aim to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell, make 100% of our packaging recyclable and use 50% recycled content in our bottles.

• In Our Products

We offer a lineup of beverages across a wide range of categories as we seek to be a Total Beverage Company, providing a wealth of choices to meet consumers’ needs throughout the day —including drinks with less added sugar and beverages with nutrition benefits. From sparkling water to dairy to soft drinks and more

Latest Sustainability News

The coca‑cola company is first to launch multiple sparkling brands in 100% recycled plastic bottles* across canada.

The Coca‑Cola System and The Coca‑Cola Foundation Mobilize to Support Ongoing Flood Relief Efforts in Kentucky

DASANI and Sprite Boost Sustainability Packaging Credentials in North America

Our Global Sustainability Goals, Initiatives, & Progress

2022 environmental, social & corporate governance report.

We make brands and products that people love while building a more sustainable future for our business and for the planet. We do all of this while staying true to our purpose: to refresh the world and make a difference.

Sustainability Resource Center

This resource provides an overview of our efforts to create a more sustainable business and better shared future that makes a difference in people’s lives communities and our planet.

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Advancing sustainability across sectors in South Africa and the continent

T hrough keynote addresses, insightful case studies, and engaging panel discussions, participants at the Future of Sustainability Conference, hosted by Topco Media recently, explored innovative strategies, shared best practices, and emphasised the urgency of collective action to address pressing environmental and social challenges across the continent. As noted by Honourable Senzo Mchunu, the Minister in the Department of Water and Sanitation, "We are dedicated to investing in water infrastructure projects to address water scarcity and improve water quality, underscoring our commitment to sustainable water management."

We’ve aimed to capture insights shared by industry thought leaders at the Future of Sustainability Conference 2024.

Ministerial address on the National Water and Sanitation Master Plan

Honourable Senzo Mchunu, the minister of the Department of Water and Sanitation, provided valuable insights into the National Water and Sanitation Master Plan, highlighting its collaborative development process and key objectives. The plan aims to ensure resilient water supply, universal access to water and sanitation, effective infrastructure management, and reduced future water demand. Legislative reforms, such as the establishment of a national water resource infrastructure agency, demonstrate the government's commitment to ensuring future sustainability. Initiatives such as catchment management agencies and water user associations play a pivotal role in enhancing local water resource management and fostering community engagement. "Private sector partnerships are crucial for augmenting funding and expertise in water service provision, ensuring sustainable water management,” adds Honourable Mchunu.

Keynote address by Ntsako Baloyi, Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa

Ntsako Baloyi, head of sustainability at Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa, underscored Coca-Cola's steadfast commitment to sustainability and its profound impact on communities and the environment. Baloyi highlights the company's multifaceted initiatives, which include water stewardship, circular packaging, climate action, and economic inclusion. Through initiatives like Project Lungisa and Cokeville, Coca-Cola demonstrates its dedication to increasing water security and replenishing water resources in high-stress areas. The company's circular economy approach to packaging, with innovations like the EcoTwist bottle, showcases its commitment to reducing waste and promoting recycling. Baloyi adds, "At Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa, we are dedicated to refreshing the country and making it a better place for all. Through collaborative efforts and sustainable solutions, we are committed to reducing our environmental impact while creating shared value for all stakeholders.”

Case studies by Old Mutual Insure, SPAR Group Ltd and OMI Solutions

Thabile Nyaba, chief risk and sustainability officer at Old Mutual Insure, presented a compelling case study on leveraging sustainable finance to drive climate adaptation. Nyaba highlights the urgency of preparing for and mitigating the impacts of climate change, emphasising the interconnectedness of climate risks and the need for collaborative solutions. Through initiatives like resilient cities and amphibian houses, Old Mutual Insure demonstrates its commitment to addressing climate-related risks and promoting resilience in communities. "It all starts with us. What actions will you take to contribute to a sustainable cause and protect our world? Our individual choices today shape the future for generations to come,” Nyaba concludes.

Kevin O’Brien, group sustainability executive at The Spar Group Ltd, emphasised the imperative for collaboration among business, civil society, and government to ensure a sustainable future. Using Spar as a case study, O’Brien highlighted the need for strategic thinking and cultural shifts within organisations to embed sustainability into their core operations. He challenges the shareholder supremacy model and advocates for a purpose-driven approach that considers the interests of all stakeholders. "Inclusive collaboration, even with competitors, is imperative for addressing complex societal issues and driving meaningful change towards a sustainable future,” adds O’Brien citing examples of Spar’s initiatives like rural hub farming and partnerships to combat period poverty and gender-based violence.

"SDG 3 should be at the forefront of our collective efforts. Without prioritising human well-being, we cannot achieve true sustainability,” states Robyn Sally Mellett, CEO and founder, of OMI Solutions. Mellett offered profound insights into mine restoration and community collaboration as catalysts for sustainable development. She emphasised the indispensable role of mine rehabilitation in mitigating environmental consequences while fostering socio-economic benefits for communities. OMI Solutions' ethos of powerful solutions with gentle delivery underscores the importance of considering community well-being alongside environmental stewardship.

Fireside chat exploring Nestlé's Income Accelerator Program and its impact on cocoa-farming families

Nestlé's Income Accelerator Program seeks to address historical inequalities in the cocoa farming sector, focusing on gender disparities, child labour risks, and low family incomes. Zumi Njongwe, the business executive director: Confectionery at Nestlé East and Southern Africa region unpacked the impact of the income accelerator program stating that, "By incentivising education and promoting sustainable farming practices, we are fostering shared value creation that benefits both cocoa communities and our business.” Responsible sourcing and social impact are fundamental to Nestlé's operations, driving its commitment to secure a stable cocoa supply chain amidst global challenges.

The collective commitment to driving positive change and fostering inclusive, stakeholder-driven approaches underscores Africa's potential to lead the way towards a more sustainable and prosperous future for all.

Here are more key takeaways

- "A lot of companies start with the environmental aspect, but they should swiftly extend their focus to social and governance factors, which are equally crucial for sustainability."

- "The evolving regulatory landscape, particularly with standards like ISSB and ESRS, underscores the need for companies to integrate sustainability across their value chains, not just within their immediate operations."

- "Sustainable trade finance in Africa is vital for the continent's development, yet it faces challenges due to divergent priorities between global investors and local needs, emphasising the urgency for a more contextualised approach."

- "African SMEs often find themselves caught between sustainable practices and economic necessity, highlighting the complexity of balancing environmental goals with socio-economic realities."

- "The future of sustainability integration hinges on empowering African voices to shape regulations and decisions, ensuring that policies align with the continent's unique socio-economic context."

- "The true potential for sustainability lies not just in large corporations but also in unlisted sectors, particularly micro and small enterprises, which play a critical role in driving economic growth and social development."

- "Prioritising sustainability efforts based on an organisation's specific goals and challenges is essential, as it allows for a focused approach that addresses the most pressing issues effectively."

- "Achieving sustainability isn't just about compliance; it's about understanding the impact of business decisions on people, the planet, and profits, and aligning strategies accordingly to drive positive change."

- "The Just Energy Transition must leave no one behind, acknowledging the impact and interests of indigenous peoples on renewable energy and sustainability."

- "We must realise that without a sustainable environment, money holds no value. It's essential to prioritise environmental sustainability in our energy strategies."

- "Africa can lead in the Just Energy Transition, leveraging initiatives like JetIP financing to achieve energy security and a clean energy mix."

- "Economic diversification and local manufacturing are crucial for maximising the value chain in renewable energy and promoting sustainable development."

- "Money is an idea backed by confidence. A Just Energy Transition must prioritise energy security, affordability, sustainability, and job creation to gain confidence and secure funding."

- "Repurposing retired coal assets with technologies like small modular reactors and gas can facilitate a comprehensive and sustainable energy transition."

- "Africa must consider regional cooperation and local investment to fund its decarbonisation journey effectively and secure its place in the global energy transition."

- "Confidence in the Just Energy Transition is essential for securing funding and ensuring energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability."

- "Innovation is key to addressing both decarbonisation and energy security challenges. By embracing innovative technologies like conduit hydro and waste-to-energy, we can achieve a double whammy: reducing emissions while ensuring reliable energy supply."

- "As leaders in the energy sector, it's imperative that we lead by example and drive the change needed to protect our planet. Collaboration and exploration of new partnerships, not just within our borders but also with neighbouring countries, are essential for creating a sustainable future."

Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. ( Syndigate.info ).

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