The Coca-Cola Company and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have expanded their partnership with focus on sustainable management of water, energy, and packaging use as well as sustainable sourcing of agricultural ingredients through 2020.

Building on the initial successes of their nearly decade-long partnership, Coca-Cola and WWF have agreed to extend their efforts by meeting ambitious new conservation and performance targets, promoting the integration of nature’s value into decision-making processes and convening influential partners to help solve shared global environmental challenges.

“At Coca-Cola, we are deeply committed to working with partners to address our collective environmental challenges and responsibly manage the planet’s resources,” said Muhtar Kent, chairman and chief executive officer, the Coca-Cola Company.

“As we face a resource-stressed world with growing global demands on food and water, we must seek solutions that drive mutual benefit for business, communities and nature. Working with WWF will continue to challenge our Company to advance our sustainability programs, and WWF’s expertise will be instrumental in reaching our environmental performance goals, some of which they help us set.”

“We are witnessing unprecedented demands on natural resources around the world. Continuing with business as usual puts everything at risk, including the viability of business,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO, World Wildlife Fund.

“These problems can only be solved by working together, and our work with Coca-Cola has proven that collaboration can amplify and accelerate the impact we need.”

Under the renewed and expanded partnership, Coca-Cola and WWF jointly developed new 2020 environmental sustainability goals for the Coca-Cola system – the company and its nearly 300 bottling partners in more than 200 countries. These goals include improving water efficiency by 25 per cent, helping ensure healthy, resilient freshwater systems, reducing CO2 emissions, responsibly sourcing material for PlantBottle packaging, sustainably sourcing of key agricultural ingredients, replenish 100 per cent of water used and reaching a 75 per cent recovery rate of bottles and cans in developed markets.

Since 2007, The Coca-Cola Company and WWF have worked together to conserve and protect freshwater resources around the world while helping to improve the efficiency of Coca-Cola’s global operations.

To date, the partnership has led to major conservation gains, including helping to improve the ecological health of seven of the world’s most important freshwater basins across five continents, helping improve the Coca-Cola system’s water efficiency by 20 per cent, working to prevent 5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions across Coca-Cola’s global manufacturing operations, and promoting more sustainable agricultural practices in the company’s supply chain.

Coca-Cola and WWF will be hosting a conference call for media to learn more about this announcement and ask questions at 1 pm ET on July 9. The conference call will be hosted by Bea Perez, Coca-Cola, chief sustainability officer, Jeff Seabright, Coca-Cola corporate environmental officer; and Carter Roberts, president and CEO, World Wildlife Fund. – TradeArabia News Service