Nowadays, people are more considerate about corporate social responsibility. In this regards, those international corporations need to more concern about the problem of ecological pollution.
The Coca Cola Company (“The company”), the world’s largest soft drink company, has done a lot thing to reduce the rate of pollution. However, there is also some adverse publicity surrounding the environmental issues with the company.Positive aspect Coca Cola had done a lot of activities and policies for environmental conservation. Those activities are facilitated and benefited both environment and stakeholder all over the world. Water is the most valuable substance in the world. It is widely used in our daily life and is vital to ecosystem.
Since Coca Cola is the largest soft drink company in the world, large consumption of water will be used. As such, the company has established water stewardship in reducing, recycling and replenishing the water it uses.The objective of the water stewardship is to safely return the water that Coca Cola used in production of beverages and other products to the nature and communities. For reducing, it has tried to reduce the water ratio to improve the efficiency of water to be used in produce their beverages.
And for recycling, it recycles the amount of water used in manufacturing processes, treated and returned the wastewater to the environment at a level that is suitable for aquatic life. For replenishing, it replenishes the water use in finished beverages by participating in locally relevant projects that include watershed protection and conservation, community drinking water and sanitation access, and water for productive community use to produce a volumetric benefit equivalent to global beverage production volume.The completed Community Water Partnership (CWP) Projects (projects that support community and ecosystem needs for safe and sustainable sources of water while protecting our ability to do business responsibly, safely and more sustainably) from year 2005 to 2009 were 119 projects and this result over 160,000 people around the world have been reached with full access to water supply in the same period and approximately 638 million liters of water has been replenished under the Company's CWP program. In 2007, Coca Cola and World Wide Fund of Nature (“WWF”) form a partnership to concentrate on how to conserve water on the seven main world’s most important freshwater basin: the Yangtze, Mekong, Danube, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Lake Niassa, the Mesoamerican Reef, and key rivers and streams in the Southeast United States.And in 2011, they have met their goals and resulted in water quality improvement, new freshwater reserves and restored habitats. Through their work, they have replenished millions of liters of water, advanced local policies for protecting watersheds and supported livelihoods in 10 countries.
In addition, since 2005, the company has engaged in 382 projects with such partners as World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), The Nature Conservancy, CARE and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Those projects help to provide additional benefits, such as improving local livelihoods, helping communities adapt to climate change, improving water quality and enhancing biodiversity. And there are more than 1.6 million people benefited from this.
In India, Coca Cola has achieved full balance between the groundwater used in beverage production and the groundwater replenished to nature and communities. Bottlers throughout India have improved water use efficiency by 25 percent since 2005.They concentrate on replenish groundwater in India are focused on harvesting rainwater, constructing check dams, restoring ponds and other natural water bodies as well as supporting agricultural water efficiency improvements. At the end of 2011, Coca Cola had installed their system in India more than 600 rainwater-harvesting structures across 22 states to capture monsoonal rains for aquifer storage.
This long term initiative is lowering farmers’ water and fertilizer costs, increasing their yields and conserving an estimated more than 1.5 billion liters of water every year across approximately 100 hectares of farmland. (2011/2012 GRI Report, P.73) Apart from the water stewardship, Coca Cola has also done other activities including sustainable packaging and climate protection for the environment conservation. Regarding the sustainable packaging, 61 percent of the company’s plastic bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate (kindly known as PET plastic).However, in view of the increasing pressure on natural resources required to make conventional PET bottles, the company had created PlantBottle packaging, the first ever fully recyclable PET made partially made from plants.
It helps to reduce to usage of non-renewable resources (Petroleum) in their packaging and reduces the emission of carbon dioxide to protect the environment. Furthermore, the Company had also introduced its idea of PlantBottle to other companies.For instance, in February 2011, the Coca Cola Company had shared their technology and entered into a partnership with H.J.
Heinz Company (Heinz), enabling Heinz to put its ketchup in PlantBottle packaging. Other companies also noticing the value of the PlantBottle packaging (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., recognized PlantBottle packaging in June 2011 with their Sustainable Packaging Award. In 2012, McDonald’s Corporation selected PlantBottl packaging for its 2012 Global Best of Sustainable Supply Report.
Negative aspect Since the Coca Cola Company had done a lot for environment conservation. However, it also did some to destruct the environment. In year 2003, The Central Pollution Board of India, the primary central government agency for monitoring pollution in India, found that eight bottling plant of Coca Cola was surrounded by sludge which contained high levels of toxic heavy metal (lead, cadmium or chromium). Due to this, the company had been charged by releasing harmful waste material to the community and should pay for the compensation.
The compensation is to compensate for the agricultural losses, water pollution and unspecified health damage between 1999 and 2004 which is done by the Palakkad bottling factory which was closed in 2005. (Relationship between The Coca-Cola Company and the environment issues. 2013)Most recently, in 2011, Coca-Cola has once again been found to be in violation of pollution norms, in Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, where heavy metals were detected by the state pollution control board. (Coca-Cola Expansion Plan Opposed in Mehdiganj, India 2013) Regarding the replenishing program, the Coca Cola Company was complained by the Indian villagers that the company pumped large quantities of water every day and the water will be replenish in somewhere else. Those farmers were affected by the shortage of water and dropping water tables.
For instance, if those water is replenished back into a rainforest river, like say the Mekong, one of the rivers included under Coca Cola's watershed program with WWF. Those Indian villagers are unlikely to be satisfied by replenishing water in the Cambodia rainforest as their wells will still be dry. (Pearce 2008)And from the Indian Resources Center website, they have claimed that Coca-Cola’s rainwater harvesting programs in India are lackluster and do not work adequately. In addition, they claimed Coca Cola has continually misrepresented the science and logic behind its water conservation projects to make fantastical claims of “water neutrality”, and Coca Cola’s claims are nothing more than greenwash to deflect attention away from the water crisis it has caused in Mehdiganj and other parts of India.
(Coca-Cola Expansion Plan Opposed in Mehdiganj, India 2013)Conclusion As a conclusion, The Coca-Cola Company has put effort in environment conservation including water stewardship, sustainable packaging and climate protection. And most of the activities are very successful and help to protect the environment except the water stewardship program. Being the world’s largest soft drink company, large consumption of water will be used, the Coca Cola Company causes the shortage of water around the world and releases some harmful heavy metal that causes the land and water pollution. As such, the company should concentrate on solving the said problem by improving their water stewardship program (for instance: try to make it more transparent as many people claims that their program have no actual measurement) to prevent and stop the pollution toward the environment.
