Coca-Cola Joins Alliance to Measure and Map Global Water Risks

The Coca-Cola Company will provide a global database of water risk information to help organizations make more informed -- and more sustainable -- decisions as part of the newly formed Aqueduct Alliance.

The Aqueduct Alliance, which also includes General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg and The Dow Chemical Company, will build a global database of water risk information from which companies, governments and investors can create maps combining advanced hydrological data with geographically specific details that identify social, economic and governance impacts.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) announced the launch of the consortium of water experts from the private and public sectors, NGOs and academia during World Water Week in Stockholm.

This publicly available database will help organizations better understand and manage their water risks. A company can use the tool when deciding where to build a facility, for example.

A working prototype covers the Yellow River Basin in northern China, and an interactive Web platform soon will include global and basin-specific data from other areas of the world.

Our Company contributed previously proprietary water risk data to help analyze water stress, quality, socioeconomic factors and potential impacts from economic development, climate and population changes.

We also published a groundbreaking report on the water sustainability of our sugar supply chain in Europe to coincide with World Water Week. The study was conducted with experts from the Technical University Vienna and the consultancy denkstatt, along with the Water Footprint Network, WWF and key beet sugar suppliers from Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain.

Results indicate that sugar beet crops -- which source 80 percent of the sugar used to produce Coca-Cola products in Europe -- are mostly grown with little irrigation or use of fertilizers and, therefore, have a relatively low water footprint.

"Our water footprinting work is an important step that reflects our system's ambitious sustainability goals and is key to building a sustainable business supply chain for the future," said Ulrike Sapiro, Corporate Responsibility Director, Environment, Europe Group, who spoke about using water footprint sustainability assessments to drive business action during a seminar in Stockholm. "Rather than just be content with measuring how much water we're using, we're very aware that it is key to gain information on our impact on nature and communities."

Download the 2011 Coca-Cola Europe Water Footprint Sustainability Assessment (PDF).