Environmental impact of Coca-Cola
Positive impacts:
Impact of coca-cola on water bodies
As water is the main ingredients of most of its flagship products, it is a critical part of the manufacturing process. Therefore Coca-cola has many water stewardship programs(coca-colacompany.com,2017). Water conservation starts in bottling plants with simple steps including each individual plant which is responsible for working with local governments to improve the quality of water source while measuring the plant’s own internal efficiencies.
Coca-cola is constantly trying to improve water-use efficiency, managing wastewater, stormwater discharge, mitigating water risk, replenishing water they use and help manage water resource in the agricultural ingredients supply chain.
As the company cares for the environment recently it a partnered with WWF, Coke is helping conserve river basins around the world that are under threat from pollution and reducing biomass including in continents like Asia with rivers like Yangtze and Mekong river deltas. Coca-cola is helping our continent by looking after rivers and streams from the southeastern portion of US. All these projects are undertaken to improve processes at its manufacturing plants to reduce the threatened quality and quantity of the world’s freshwater supply.
In 2007 according to a report(washingtonpost.com,2016). Coca-cola had announced a goal of replenishing its water usage by 2020. Through 248 community water partnership in 71 countries around the world by 2015 Coca-cola had returned 191.9 billion liters of water to nature or human communities. That’s more than 115 percent of the water is used in its beverages in 2015.
Packaging:
Global businesses like Coca-Cola have the opportunity and responsibility to lead in building more sustainable packaging portfolios. In 2017 the company worked internally to create a massive first of its kind goal to help collect and recycle every bottle sold annually and globally by 2030 thus removing plastic from our wasteland. They have started an initiative called a world without waste which claims to make 100% of packaging to be made from recyclable material by 2025.
Another great initiative by the parent coca-cola company is reducing the size of plastic bottles and caps which pollute the earth. It has invested in recycling plants like the one in Spartanburg, SC which is also the largest bottle to bottle recycling plant.
According to coca-cola.com in 2009 coca-cola introduced PLantbottle packaging- the first-ever fully recyclable plastic bottle using up to 30% plant resin. Since then coca-cola has introduced more than 1 billion plantbottle packages into market helping save over 8500 tons of CO2 in equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.
Refrigeration:
According to The Coca, Cola.co.uk refrigeration is a major cause of greenhouse emissions in a business. Therefore to combat that the company has developed and licensed an ‘Energy Management Device’ for our coolers. This device is “smart” in the sense that it leans from store and shopping patterns using notion detectors and switches in the door. By doing so the energy efficiency of cooling equipment has improverd by 40% It is to be noted that coca-cola company only buys refrigeration equipment from HFC free insulation. In 2014 they installed over 1 million HFC free cooler worldwide as it tries to reach its goal to make the percentage of HFC free refrigirators to 100%. To make the entire world a better place the Coca-Cola’s (U.K) chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent with support of Greenpeace International made consumer goods form to adopt a broader initiative against the use of refrigerant gases with high global warming potential. As a result of the Coca-Cola system’s commitment to eliminate the use of HFCs in our equipment, carbon emission reductions will exceed 52.5 million tons over the life of the equipment — the equivalent of taking more than 11 million cars off of the road for one year.
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/2016-water-stewardship
https://www.mnn.com/money/sustainable-business-practices/stories/coca-cola-and-environmental-responibility
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/08/30/coca-cola-just-achieved-a-major-environmental-goal-for-its-water-use/?noredirect=on;utm_term=.d2eb39b28e9c
https://www.coca-cola.ca/stories/worldwithoutwaste
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/learn-more-about-sustainable-packaging
https://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/coca-cola-refrigeration
