Position Statement on Climate Protection

The consensus on climate science is increasingly unequivocal -- global climate change is happening and man-made greenhouse gas emissions are a crucial factor. The implications of climate change for our planet are profound and wide-ranging, with expected impacts on biodiversity, water resources, public health, and agriculture.

Across the Coca-Cola system, we recognize that climate change may have long-term direct and indirect implications for our business and supply chain. As a responsible multinational company, we have a role to play in ensuring we use the best possible mix of energy sources, improve the energy efficiency of our manufacturing processes, and reduce the potential climate impact of the products we sell.

Regulations to help reduce carbon emissions as a cause of climate change already exist in some of our markets and others are emerging. We believe that, beyond regulatory compliance, business can play a powerful role to help drive climate solutions through innovation and competition.

Our response to climate change also reflects Coca-Cola's integrated approach to sustainability in which climate protection is a key component of our business strategy, under the Planet element of our Manifesto for Growth.

The Coca-Cola Company and bottling system, through our Energy & Climate Protection strategy, are committed to finding innovative ways to mitigate the environmental effects of our operations and products. In particular, we are linking climate change to our leadership on water stewardship issues and to our work with supply chain partners on packaging.

The three principal activities of the Coca-Cola business system which create greenhouse gases are our manufacturing plants, the distribution fleet, and cold drink equipment. We continually strive to improve the energy efficiency of our plants and fleet. In addition, the area where we have the greatest opportunity to make a difference is cold drink equipment. HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) are one of the six gases which the Kyoto Protocol specifically called to be reduced: We are making good progress toward phasing out HFC use in both refrigeration and insulation as well as to improve the energy efficiency of cold drink equipment by 40-50%.

As an extension of our efforts, The Coca-Cola Company co-founded "Refrigerants, Naturally!" with McDonald's and Unilever along with support from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Greenpeace. This is an example of public-private collaboration on innovative solutions for climate protection.

You can find more about what we are doing to reduce our carbon footprint in our Environmental Reports and in our responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project. We also post our GHG inventory on the World Economic Forum's Global Greenhouse Gas Register.