COMPANY PROFILE

The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation and manufacturer, retailer and marketer of nonalcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.The company is best known for its flagship product Coca-Cola, invented in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in Columbus, Georgia.

Coca-Cola currently offers more than 500 brands in over 200 countries or territories and serves over 1.7 billion servings each day.

The company operates a franchised distribution system dating from 1889 where The Coca-Cola Company only produces syrup concentrate which is then sold to various bottlers throughout the world who hold an exclusive territory.

Protecting the environment

Inside every bottle of Coca-Cola is the commitment of a company that is deeply concerned about climate change and doing our part to help protect the environment. We have made a commitment to give back to communities the same amount of water we use to produce our beverages; we are pursuing a vision of zero packaging waste; and we are promoting sustainable agriculture and innovating to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions even as we grow our business.

Water stewardship program

Inside every bottle of Coca-Cola is the story of a company that understands the priceless value of water, respects it as the most precious of shared global resources and works vigorously to conserve water worldwide. 

Clean, accessible water is essential to the health of communities. It is critical to ecosystems and indispensable for economic prosperity. And it is essential for our business. Water is the main ingredient in our beverages, central to our manufacturing process and necessary for growing the agricultural products we use as ingredients.

Sustainable packaging

What We’re Doing

At The Coca-Cola Company, packaging plays an essential role for our business in meeting consumer needs and preventing waste by protecting our products during delivery. We work to deliver the quality beverage our consumers expect in the most efficient way possible with a key focus on recyclability, minimizing resources and increasing the use of recycled and renewable materials. Additionally, we support programs that encourage consumers to recycle used beverage packaging.

How we’re doing this

We are taking steps to advance our sustainable packaging strategy through Recovery, Recycling, and the use of Recycled and Renewable materials. For example, studies show that convenient access to recycling bins is a key factor in increasing the recovery of recyclables in public areas. That is why we support the placement of several thousand recycling bins in public spaces every year. We have invested directly in six plastic bottle-to-bottle

recycling plants around the world, which process millions of pounds of material each year, helping to produce new packaging and other items. And, we use packaging innovation to drive the sustainability and performance of our packaging through the use of renewable materials. This includes designing packages that meet our quality standards while using less material, working to make our packaging 100% recyclable, and increasing the renewable material in our packaging. 

We work with governments, civil society and other business to help achieve our packaging goals.

Our Progress on the Journey

We have focused on the sustainability of our packaging for many years:

In 1969, our Company commissioned the first study to examine the whole environmental impact of a package, laying the framework for the life cycle assessment methodology used today.

In the early 1990s, we became the first company to use food-grade recycled PET plastic—known as rPET—in packaging.

To increase the amount of renewable material in our packaging, we created Plant Bottle™

packaging, the first-ever fully recyclable PET bottle made partially from plants.

Today, we continue to look for innovative ideas that increase the sustainability of our packaging, and encourage its collection and recycling in order to extend the valuable lifecycle of this resource.

Packaging recovery programs

Happy Recycling Machine:

Coca-Cola Singapore brings together government, civil society, and a very special vending machine to help increase recycling rates across the country. When consumers placed their empty plastic beverage bottles in the machine, they received an award for being environmentally responsible. The campaign collected 51,827 recycled bottles, while educating the public on the importance of sustaining environmental resources.

Project Recover:

Project Recover, an initiative supported by The Coca-Cola Company that involves the local government and non-profit organizations in Thailand, helps create cooperative communities centered on the recovery and recycling of beverage packages. The project provides job opportunities for members of the local community, as they are able to collect recyclable materials and turn them into the cooperative for payment.

2012 London Games:

In London, a zero waste infrastructure helped create the most sustainable Olympic Games of modern times. More than 15 million plastic bottles were recycled to produce new beverage packaging that was back on store shelves within six weeks. In addition to the goal to recycle every soft drink bottle collected at London 2012, all Coca-Cola packaged products were served in 100 percent recyclable plastic bottles, which contained up to 25 percent recycled content, and Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero drinks were served in PlantBottle™ packaging, containing up to 22.5 percent plant-based material. Coca-Cola also placed 260 recycling bins in locations around the center of London.

ReImagine Beverage Containers:

We are piloting Reimagine Beverage Containers recycling centers, which provide interactive collection kiosks to encourage recycling. More than 13 million containers have been recycled since the Reimagine pilot program launched in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in late 2010. On average, each week more than 1,500 consumers bring their cans and PET plastic bottles to the recycling center, and more than 1,000,000 cans and bottles are recycled each month.

Packaging recycling programs

Nigeria PET recycling

In 2005, Coca-Cola, in collaboration with Alkem Nigeria Limited, a fiber processing manufacturer, initiated a buyback and recycling scheme for used PET bottles, regardless of source or brand. Together, the partners launched Nigeria’s first bottles-to-fiber recycling operation. Coca-Cola is the only player in the beverage sector that is investing in this initiative and was joined in 2009 by its bottling partner, Nigerian Bottling Company Limited. Since 2005, the volume of bottles that are recycled through the program has grown from 135

tons in 2005 to 6,200 tons in 2012. And, the initiative has help create jobs for an estimated 1,500 people.

Don't Waste. Create

In partnership with Sainsbury’s, a grocery chain in Great Britain,Coca-Cola Enterprises launched a campaign to encourage consumers to re-use their plastic bottles at home in a fun and useful way.  The program encourages parents to sign up and ‘pledge’ to recycle, and provides a website where they and their families can learn creative ways to re-use plastic beverage packaging, from making bird feeders to creating a self-watering plastic bottle plant pot. Once the activities are completed, families are encouraged to recycle the plastic bottles. The program informs and encourages participants on the importance of recycling used beverage containers.

Together We Are Making Recycling Count

Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) and Tesco joined forces this summer in Great Britain to encourage

customers to recycle more at home and to educate them on how they can help reduce the national carbon footprint. The online campaign targeted Tesco Clubcard customers and asked them to 'pledge' to recycle. For participating, customers can choose between a 50p off voucher for Coca-Cola, Diet Coke or Coke Zero or 25 additional Tesco Clubcard points. A campaign website was set up to show the total number of pledges received during the six week long activity, as well as the equivalent tonnage of waste recycled, so that everyone visiting will be able to see the size of their contribution.

Sustainable agricultureInside almost all of our products is the story of a farm somewhere in the world. As a general business practice, we do not own or operate farms, and we buy only a small percentage of our ingredients directly from farmers. But through our global suppliers, our system buys millions of tons of fresh fruit, corn, tea, sugar, coffee and other ingredients every year. The future of our business depends on a reliable long-term supply of those ingredients.

Our approach to sustainable agriculture is founded on principles to protect the environment, uphold workplace rights and help build more sustainable communities. We seek to mitigate business risk by addressing challenges to the availability, quality and safety of agricultural ingredients; to meet consumer demand for products that align with a healthy and sustainable lifestyle; and to balance the costs of sustainability by leveraging relationships and initiating new opportunities as they make sense.

To support more sustainable agricultural practices, we are:

incorporating sustainable agricultural criteria into our long-term ingredient sourcing plans;

working with partners and suppliers to improve livelihoods through efforts to increase crop yields and reduce production costs; and

helping farmers to improve agricultural practices and reduce environmental impacts, such as minimizing the use of pesticides and optimizing fertilizer applications.