Coke steps up WWF water saving partnership

Coca-Cola has extended its water saving deal with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for another two years and has pledged to provide a further $3.74m (£2.31m) to improve its water use efficiency by 20 per cent on 2004 levels by 2012.

The original $20m partnership was formed in 2007 to reduce carbon emissions, promote sustainable agriculture practices and save water use.

"Last year, we set a goal to return to communities and to nature an amount of water equal to what we use in our beverages and their production," said Coca Cola chief executive Muhtar Kent. "These targets support our work to achieve that goal."

The company said that it has also worked with WWF to develop a software-based Water Efficiency Toolkit that has been distributed to managers and operators throughout its supply chain.

Alongside water efficiency measures, Coca-Cola said it is also working to cut its carbon emissions from its manufacturing operations in developed countries by five per cent by 2015 from a 2004 baseline, and was looking to promote more sustainable agricultural practices – initially focusing on sugarcane production but with a goal of identifying two more commodities to work on next year.

Coke and WWF are working with the Better Sugarcane Initiative to establish standards, evaluate suppliers and set goals for the purchase of sugar.

The announcements came as the company released its Sustainability Review this week, highlighting a two per cent improvement in water use efficiency in the past year and a $40m investment in a bottle recycling plant in the US that will become operational in 2009.

However, despite the progress made the company is likely to face continued to calls to cut down on its water footprint. On average, it currently takes two and a half litres of water to make one litre of beverage.