Coca-Cola's new environmental strategy focuses on packaging and water security

On December 2, 2024, the Coca-Cola Company unveiled updated voluntary environmental goals as part of its ongoing commitment to its purpose: 'Refresh the World and Make a Difference'.

The American multinational corporation, The Coca‑Cola Company, is a total beverage company with products sold in more than 200 countries and territories.

These updated goals reflect the valuable insights gained over decades of sustainability efforts, along with periodic assessments of progress and challenges. Achieving these ambitious targets will require continued investment in innovation and infrastructure, supportive legislation, and strengthened collaboration with bottling partners, industry peers, local governments, and civil society.

The company focuses on key priorities, including enhancing water security in high-risk areas, reducing packaging waste, and cutting emissions. Additionally, Coca-Cola has extended its sustainability timeline to 2035 to ensure a meaningful and lasting impact.

Bea Perez, Executive Vice President and Global Chief Communications, Sustainability & Strategic Partnerships Officer at The Coca‑Cola Company, stated, "We remain committed to building long-term business resilience and earning our social license to operate through our evolved voluntary environmental goals."

"These challenges are complex and require us to drive more effective and efficient resource allocation and work collaboratively with partners to deliver lasting positive impact."

According to a press release, The Coca-Cola Company stated:

The following 2035 goals replace previous environmental goals set by the company related to water, packaging, climate, and agriculture.

Water

• Aim to return more than 100 per cent of the water used in finished products globally, on an aggregate level, to nature and communities. Since 2015, the company¹ has met or exceeded this goal.
• Seek to return 100 per cent of the total water used in each of the more than 200 high-risk locations across the Coca‑Cola system.

Water is essential to people and ecosystems and is the main ingredient in the company’s products. Because water is sourced locally, the company aims to reach 100 per cent replenishment of water used in each of the more than 200 high-risk locations across the Coca‑Cola system. The locations, which represent almost a third of the Coca‑Cola system’s locations² globally, were identified following an extensive analysis updated in 2024³.

The risk profile of the Coca‑Cola system’s production facilities is expected to be reassessed within five years to help ensure investments and actions are appropriately calibrated to help improve water security where the company operates.

The company continues to promote water stewardship, increase water use efficiency, and treat and return safe water to communities.

Packaging

Aim to use 35 to 40 per cent recycled material⁴ in primary packaging (plastic, glass, and aluminium), including increasing recycled plastic use to 30 to 35 per cent globally.

Help ensure the collection of 70 to 75 per cent of the equivalent number of bottles and cans introduced into the market annually.

The company offers beverages in a variety of packaging formats – glass and plastic bottles, aluminium cans, and refillable packaging. Each option can play a role in helping reduce packaging waste and emissions. The company is focusing its efforts on using more recycled material in primary packaging and supporting collection rates, both of which require enabling policies and the growth of collection infrastructure. The company intends to continue to invest in refillable packaging where infrastructure already exists. The Coca‑Cola system aims to focus on measurable and interconnected actions under two pillars: Design and Partner to Collect.

Design

The company is focused on ensuring that its primary packaging is recyclable. Almost all (more than 95 per cent)⁵ of the company’s primary consumer packaging is designed to be recycled, and it is working to resolve the remaining packages.

The use of recycled content in primary packaging can help reduce the company’s emissions. This effort, combined with innovations such as lightweighting, can avoid the additional use of virgin plastic. Costs, quality, and scaling innovation are dynamic external factors that will affect implementation.

Partner to collect

The collection and recycling of beverage packaging remain challenging, as every state and country has unique systems, infrastructure, regulatory environments and sets of consumer behaviours. Collective action is needed to support packaging collection infrastructure and policies. The company will continue to focus on increased advocacy for well-designed collection systems, as these are often the most efficient ways to improve packaging collection rates.

If the company reaches its 70 to 75 per cent collection rate ambition, it intends to continue working to increase collection further over the long term. The company also intends to invest to expand the use of refillable packaging in markets where infrastructure is in place to support this important part of the company’s portfolio.

Through collaboration with local and global partners, the company will continue to expand its design innovations, explore new collection models or improve existing ones, invest in local infrastructure and engage with policymakers.

Emissions

Aim to reduce the company’s Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions in line with a 1.5°C trajectory by 2035 from a 2019 baseline. 

The company aims to reduce emissions in its own operations, including concentrate manufacturing operations and company-owned bottling partners. The company’s actions on water and packaging can also help mitigate the impacts caused by climate change. The company’s acquired businesses will be excluded from this goal, including BODYARMOR, CHI, Costa, doğadan, fairlife and innocent. The company expects to prepare these businesses for integration into its 1.5°C trajectory over time.  

Achieving this ambition requires additional investments in new technologies and renewable sources, and working with franchise bottling partners and suppliers to reduce their direct emissions, which are the company’s Scope 3 emissions.

Ongoing actions

While the company will no longer have a voluntary goal in agriculture, it seeks to continue initiatives and programs with suppliers and third-party stakeholders to support sustainable sourcing of agricultural ingredients. These actions are intended to reduce water use and emissions to help prevent deforestation and conserve high-risk areas in the supply chain. The company also recognizes the importance of continuing and expanding efforts and partnering with stakeholders to better the lives of those who grow and harvest ingredients included in beverages and packaging.

The company expects to continue to report on its sustainability progress annually. It also intends to evaluate its actions, market dynamics, additional learnings, and stakeholder needs regularly to maintain close alignment of 2035 goals with business priorities and the company’s progress.

“We know we will have more chapters in our journey and that we can’t do it alone,” Perez said. “Continued collaboration, targeted investments, and well-designed policies are crucial to help create shared value for all.”

Image credit: https://www.strategeast.org/

Information credit: The Coca-Cola Company Press Release

Footnotes

^{1 With support from The Coca‑Cola Foundation, the company’s owned and independent bottling partners and independent suppliers and partners.}

^{2 The Coca‑Cola system is made up of over 200 bottling partners and 950 production facilities. For the assessment of high-risk locations, the number of facilities evaluated was approximately 720 locations, as it does not include third-party contracted manufacturers.}

^{3 Using the World Resources Institute Aqueduct 4.0 tool and Coca‑Cola system-level assessments of each production facility.}

^{4 The company will continue to comply with local regulations, including where higher percentages of recycled content are required.}

^{5 Excludes cups which are purchased by customers and outside of the company’s control.}