The brand once identified by a smiling elf wearing a bottle cap hat, would also eventually bring us the unforgettable sparkly, beard-sporting Santa that we know so well today. So is it possible that Coca-Cola‘s powerful trend-setting influence on American culture could have a similar lasting impact on our sustainability practices?
Last week, the bottler of 3,000 beverages — including Coke, Sprite, Dasani and Odwalla — released its fourth Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability report, announcing some of the company’s major accomplishments and setting future environmental goals.
On top of boasting a beverage calorie reduction of 58 percent in U.S. high schools in 2008, one of the report’s highlights revealed Coca-Cola Enterprise’s first-ever measurement of its carbon footprint — claiming an annual release of about 1.5 million metric tons of CO2. To offset that number, the Pop King reduced energy consumption by seven percent between 2006 and 2008, while saving 301 million liters of water through company-wide water efficiency initiatives. The world’s largest beverage producer also recovered or reused 125,000 metric tons of packaging materials through Coca-Cola Recycling, as well as established the largest heavy duty hybrid fleet in North America. Moreover, CCE joined the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leaders Program,”an industry-government partnership that works to develop comprehensive climate change strategies.”
Commitment 2020 lays out Coca Cola’s goals for the next decade. Using its 2007 emissions baseline, they pledge to reduce carbon emissions 15 percent by 2020 and create a “water-neutral” impact on local communities. Having already reduced the amount of water used to produce each beverage from 1.82 to 1.73 liters, CCE promises to continue to lower that ratio toward 1.3 liters. Reiterating its goal of recovering all its packaging, Commitment 2020′s recycling plans fall in line with Coca-Cola’s future ambitions of recycling 100 percent of both all the aluminum cans and all the PET plastic bottles it produces.
Coming from a corporate giant like Coca-Cola, this is great stuff. Hey, and here’s a way to help fast-track those goals: how about an ad this December with jolly old Santa leaning from his hybrid sleigh, dropping a Coke bottle into a recycle bin?
Photo courtesy of Coca-Cola press center.