CSR Thursdays is a student-authored blog post series in which we share information about the corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts underway by the many and diverse suppliers and vendors of the UW. Look no further to start gaining an understanding on what businesses that provide products often purchased by students, faculty, and staff are doing to promote environmental sustainability!
This week’s company: Coca Cola
This week we will explore a few of Coca Cola's sustainability efforts. Coca Cola is a UW Campus sponsor and is one of the vendors providing drinks to the many cafes and stores on campus. Coca Cola has been a soncistent sponsor of the SustainableUW Festival as well.
Two notable sustainability initiatives by Coca Cola are the economic empowerment of women and the increase in water stewardship practices.
The 5by20 initiative is to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs across their global value chain by 2020. Programs have been implemented in a total of 52 countries across the globe. Coca Cola reports that since the programs launch in 2010 nearly 865,000 women have been enabled.
In August of this year, Coca Cola announced that it achieved its goal to replenish the equivalent amount of water used in its global sales volume and production back to the communities and nature. Coca Cola is the first Fortune 500 company to make an achievement of this type. According to a global water use assessment validated by LimnoTech and Deloitte, and conducted in association with the Nature Conservancy, the Coca Coal system returned and estimated 191.9 billion liters of water to nature and communities in 2015. This is equivalent to 115% of the water used in Coca Cola's finished beverages last year.
To find out more about empowerment and water use plus the many other sustainability initiatives, visit their sustainability page here.
Disclaimer: reference herein and appearance of external hyperlinks to any specific company, commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise are provided for information purposes only and does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the University of Washington.