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April 17, 2008
In the April 17 online edition of Fortune magazine,
writer Marc Gunther explores how The Coca-Cola Company is committed
to investing in a sustainable future through a focus on water
stewardship, sustainable packaging and climate protection.
Read
the article in Fortune magazine.
The feature explains how we are making strides internally in
these core environmental areas and how we are teaming up with
bottlers, suppliers, customers, governments and non-governmental
organizations to enact change on a broader scale. The article
mentions our Company's goal to become "water neutral"
in our operations by helping bottlers waste less and by working
to protect or replenish watersheds around the world. It also
describes our goals to recycle or reuse 100 percent of our PET
plastic bottles and to help curb climate change by transitioning
to environmentally friendly refrigeration technologies.
Water Stewardship
"No company is doing more than Coke to provide clean
water to the world's poor (and not-so-poor) people,"
notes Gunther. "With the Gates Foundation and CARE, Coke
is delivering water-purification systems to dozens of schools
in Kenya. With local partners, it is building more than 300
rainwater-harvesting structures to capture monsoon rains in
India. Last year, the Company pledged $20 million to a partnership
with WWF to improve the health of seven river basins, including
the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Danube and a network of streams,
lakes and rivers in the southeast U.S., Coke's backyard."
Sustainable Packaging
The article notes our recent $44 million investment in building
the world's largest PET bottle-to-bottle recycling plant and
our partnership with RecycleBank, a company that provides incentives
for local communities to recycle.
Climate Protection
Fortune also cites our progress on improving energy-efficiency
and reducing emissions through our eKOfreshment program. The
article mentions our relationship with Greenpeace and a coalition
of companies to develop vending
machines and coolers that are HFC-free and 40 to 50 percent
more energy efficient than conventional beverage equipment.
Our Chairman and CEO, E. Neville Isdell, said he is optimistic
about the way the discussion around refrigeration and vending
machines has changed. It used to be around "why we would
want to do this," he said. "Now we're in the solutions
business. That's a totally different paradigm."
But even Isdell, a self-professed environmentalist, knows that
turning Coke green isn't going to be easy. It helps, though,
that some of this is personal. The 63-year-old Isdell lived
for more than 25 years in Africa, where he fell in love with
the landscape as a boy growing up in Zambia. Isdell returns
to Africa almost every year to indulge in his passion for wildlife
photography.
Read
the article in Fortune magazine.
Learn
more about our commitment to a sustainable future.
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