World Without Waste

We strive to avoid and minimize food loss and food waste across our entire value chain, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3. Preventing food loss helps us preserve water and other natural resources, avoid related carbon emissions, and mitigate the related social and economic effects in agriculture.

Our target to tackle food waste and loss across our activities and operations is:

• to decrease our absolute food losses (in dry matter) by 30% by 2025 compared to our 2019 baseline despite volume growth, an increase in portfolio/beverage categories, and expansion to emerging markets, and further reduce by 40% by 2030 vs. 2019.

Food loss and waste coming at our manufacturing sites are part of the overall waste management process. We strive to reach 100% recycled waste and have zero waste to landfill. We have reduced the percentage of manufacturing waste going to landfill significantly: in 2022, only 1.9% of our manufacturing waste went to landfilled, while in 2015 10.1% (this means in 2022 98.1% of total manufacturing waste was recycled or used for alternative usage).

To achieve our waste reduction targets, we apply the waste hierarchy principles (waste pyramid): prevent/avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, waste disposal.

Programmes and processes to prevent, avoid and minimize food waste and loss

Our aim is to ensure efficient use and control of raw and packaging materials, and our operations in order to minimize all losses and waste, including food. It starts with the demand and supply chain planning process, batch management and traceability of the materials and products, quality control of all materials, semi-finished and finished products, control of the non-conforming products, inventory management across the value chain, engagement with suppliers, customers, distributors, co-packers, and other partners.

Within production efficiency management, our teams on the production floor are measuring and analyzing the losses from their production lines and the overall line efficiency on a daily basis, using this knowledge to set actions for improvement.

Expired products are the biggest part of the food loss we generate. In order to minimise them, we have introduced a process called product age management. It allows us to set up a goal for each stage of the product life cycle. In the marketplace, with the Product Freshness programme, we control the expiry date and age of our products and thus minimise food waste and finish goods write off. We check and monitor the age and take measures at sales area and customer level.

We monitor the product age in our warehouses on a monthly basis, then we follow up the delivery age of the products with our customers and we monitor our product age (whether the products are within their defined primary age or expired) on customers’ shelves monthly as a last point of our checks. This gives us good insights on product rotation time, leads to improved planning of the product age at every step, and reduces the amount of expired products in the marketplace.

As we have implemented warehouse age monitoring on a monthly basis, and Total Age Management (TAM), we now have the opportunity to control our food loss and waste through S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) meetings, where products in warehouses close to expiration can be managed to avoid food waste through specific promotions, product sampling, internal consumption or charity donation.

Also based on market insights and demand levels, we can adjust our productions in the direction of food waste and loss avoidance through effective planning and sales processes.

Food waste and loss measuring

At production sites (plant level), we measure and separately collect each type of food loss (raw materials, manufacturing process, warehouse activities, storage, transportation). Each category of food loss is recorded in our specialised software and monitored at least monthly.

At the retail level (our customers), we measure the age of every finished good with our Total Age Monitoring (TAM) programme, and we take measures to avoid expired products.

Food waste and loss reporting and performance review

We utilize our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for reporting the food losses/waste. It is part of the overall business loss software solution. All food losses/waste are traced monthly, per country and per reason. More than 20 different reasons are assigned in our system for any business loss, and we use these reason codes for performing a deep analysis. As part of the monthly performance review, every function evaluates the absolute number of losses (in units and monetary terms), its percentage against the total volume of product sold, the trend vs. the last reporting period and vs. target, the reasons and root causes, and develops action plans for reduction. Annual targets are set at the country level.

Alternative use

In case food waste from expired products is unavoidable, we evaluate if these products are fit for human consumption and we work with different charity organisations and partners to redistribute them (e.g., FoodCloud, Fareshare, Too Good To Go).

If products cannot be used for human consumption, they go through anaerobic digestion, either in our own wastewater treatment facilities or at external wastewater treatment facilities. The product is crushed, with the liquid part recycled (treated to the levels supporting aquatic life) and the remaining part (sludge, which is the dry food loss), after further treatment, used for alternative purposes such as composting for agricultural needs or incineration for energy recovery and biogas/biofuel.

In Switzerland, we’re fighting against food waste in partnership with “Too Good To Go” start-up. They offer an app that connects consumers with food suppliers and turns them into what is known as #wastewarriors. Beverages approaching their best-before date within the next few weeks can be bought through their app at a bargain price. 

Example of good practice in our Irish operations:
https://lovebelfast.co.uk/coca-cola-partner-with-foodcloud-and-fareshare/
https://www.checkout.ie/a-brands/coca-cola-partner-with-foodcloud-and-fareshare-156580