FAQs
Environment
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What is Coca-Cola doing to reduce energy use, waste and packaging?
We are committed to cutting carbon while growing our business. The Carbon Trust report* into our carbon footprint has really helped us to make our business greener. We're looking at packaging in particular, as this represents a high proportion of our carbon footprint - since 1994, we've managed to reduce the weight of our plastic bottles by 38.5 per cent. We've already made progress towards our target of using 25 per cent recycled material in these bottles - in the meantime, our glass bottles are already 37 per cent recycled and our cans are 50 per cent recycled aluminium.
Reducing landfill is a top priority. Ninety per cent of the waste produced at our factories is now recycled, with just 10 per cent going to landfill - a 68 per cent reduction since 2002. We've also joined forces with the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to create nationwide Recycle Zones, encouraging our customers to recycle.
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What is the carbon footprint of a can of Coca-Cola?
A 330ml can of Coca-Cola has a carbon footprint of 170g. We worked out the carbon footprint of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero with the help of the Carbon Trust*, and have looked into our production, packaging and distribution processes to find out where we can cut emissions.
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What is Coca-Cola doing to reduce water wastage?
Water is essential to our business, as it is the main ingredient in our products. We currently use about 1.47 litres of water to every litre of drink produced, but we want to improve on this, and use only 1.39 litres. Our strategy is to reduce, recycle and replenish. Under our water stewardship strategy we're aiming to return safely to nature an amount of water equivalent to that which we use in all our drinks and their production. We've used water meters to show where we can be more efficient and this has already helped us improve our water usage ratio by 21 per cent since 2001.
We're reusing water, too. In one of our factories the water that washes empty cans is now used to cool our pumping equipment. We also want to make sure that the water we use doesn't affect the local communities around us. In 2006, for example, we introduced a second borehole at our Edmonton factory, to draw water from 100 miles below ground where supplies are plentiful.
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Does Coca-Cola test on animals?
The Coca-Cola Company does not conduct any animal tests and we do not directly fund any animal testing of our drinks. Where government agencies require animal tests to demonstrate ingredient safety, we rely on third-party testing. We have shared our concern regarding the ethical and humane treatment of animals with our suppliers and others in the industry. We encourage the use of alternative testing methods whenever and wherever possible and have financially supported research to develop these alternative methods.
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Do any Coca-Cola products use GM ingredients?
No, we don't use any genetically modified ingredients in our drinks.
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Does Coca-Cola provide recycling bins?
One of the most important things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint is to make it easier to recycle our packaging. This is why we launched Recycle Zones in 2008, the UK's first branded on-the-go recycling scheme. Recycle Zones provide convenient bins for empty bottles and cans, which are then collected for recycling.
Working with Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), we have a three year plan to create over 80 Recycle Zones in busy locations around the UK by 2011, which is already well underway with Zones in place at Thorpe Park, the London Eye and Wembley Arena, among other locations.
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Does Coca-Cola create a lot of pollution while transporting their drinks?
One thing that surprises people about Coca-Cola is the local nature of our business. We have a global brand but our production and distribution is coordinated in thousands of local communities around the world.
When it comes to transportation, our fleet of vehicles is actually the smallest contributor to our carbon footprint. We own a small fleet of distribution vehicles, which are mainly used for smaller deliveries to local shops and newsagents. We also use haulage companies such as Eddie Stobart Ltd to transport bulk deliveries to supermarkets and other large customers. These deliveries account for over 19 million road miles every year, equating to roughly 0.5% of all HGV food miles undertaken in the UK.
We've been working to reduce emissions from both our own fleet and our industry partners. We're reducing the carbon footprint of our own vehicles through better journey planning and by using smaller vehicles for smaller loads. We're also reducing harmful exhaust emissions as we now buy vehicles which meet Enhanced Environmentally-friendly Vehicle (EEV) standards. And we are trialing the use of vehicles running on biomethane within our distribution fleet, which are the first logistics HGV of its kind in Great Britain. Biomethane is a renewable transport fuel produced from the natural breakdown of organic matter that either takes place in landfills or anaerobic digestion plants. The fuel is close to carbon neutral, and when used in vehicles it has very low exhaust emissions with regards local air quality and is considerably quieter than conventional diesel vehicles.
During 2007 and 2008, these green distribution initiatives have saved just under 1.5 million road miles (this is approximately 2,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year - equivalent to the carbon emissions of 167 households). See the carbon footprint of our popular drinks.
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Are Coca-Cola's fridges and vending machines climate-friendly?
Increasingly so, and we're currently working to minimise the environmental impact of this equipment in a number of ways:
Coca-Cola has developed and licensed an 'Energy Management Device' for our coolers. The 'smart' device works out when it needs to be at full power, and when it can enter 'sleep mode'. It then manages its power consumption to suit these patterns - e.g. having the drinks cold and the lights on during office hours in a company canteen and powering down at night and weekends. This technology helps cut energy use by an average of 25%.
We are currently retrofitting glass doors onto open-fronted coolers. This results in a reduction in energy usage of around 50%.
We have programmes in place to dispose of refrigeration equipment responsibly. This prevents refrigerant gases such as HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) - which are potent greenhouse gases - from escaping into the atmosphere.
We only purchase refrigeration equipment with HFC-free insulation. We're also making progress toward our goal to transition to equipment that uses HFC-free refrigerant fluids in all new purchases by 2015.
We've been replacing standard fluorescent lighting on our coolers and vending machines with long-life LED lighting, which is 80% more efficient compared to fluorescent lighting.
We've been working hard to bring about global changes in refrigeration technology and find alternative, HFC-free refrigeration equipment and have thus formed the Refrigerants Naturally partnership - together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Greenpeace and McDonald's. We are working to encourage the refrigeration industry and our peer companies to help us do more in years to come.
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