World Without Waste

World without waste

WORKING TOWARDS A WORLD WITHOUT WASTE

 

Mission 2025 sustainability commitments

  • 100% of our consumer packaging will be recyclable;
  • Source 35% of the total PET we use from recycled PET and/or PET from renewable material;
  • Help collect the equivalent of 75% of our primary packaging.

 


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We believe every package has value and life beyond its initial use and that it should be collected and recycled into a new package. Together with our suppliers and partners, we are working to design more sustainable packaging and take action to ensure that our packaging doesn’t end up as waste.

Packaging plays a vital role in keeping our products fresh and safe. Sustainable packaging and waste management are important to our business, given the amount of packaging we use, the variety of pack materials we use and the need to recover and recycle them after these have been consumed. 76% of our sales volume comes from developing and emerging markets, where waste management infrastructure needs to develop to avoid landfilling or avoid entering of waste in environment (polluting).

The big amount of packaging we use for our finished products, if not collected and recycled properly, would end up in the soil, in the rivers and oceans which could have a negative impact on ecosystems, human health (toxicity), and society. Packaging waste and climate change are interconnected global challenges, in the focus for businesses and communities. 34% of our value chain emissions come from packaging materials, and to achieve our NetZeroby40 emissions goal we invest in sustainable packaging solutions. When we lightweight our packaging, incorporate more recycled and bio-based material, invest in local recycling programs and increase our use of reusable packaging, we can reduce both waste and our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. 

Our Mission Sustainability 2025 commitments set out how we plan to achieve these goals. By 2025, we will:

100%

of our primary packaging is already recyclable 

48%

of our bottles and cans were collected for reuse or recycling

10.5%

of our PET was from renewable or recycled materials

Building on these important milestones, we are also committed to playing our part in helping to deliver The Coca‑Cola Company’s ambitious environmental programme, World Without Waste. World Without Waste is built under three strategic pillars, design, collect and partner;

  1. Design: To make our primary packaging 100% recyclable by 2025—and use at least 50% recycled material in our primary packaging by 2030;
  2. Collect: To collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one we sell by 2030;
  3. Partner: To work with organisations across the world to support a healthy, debris-free environment.

While we still have some way to go on our journey to deliver these commitments, we have made good progress to date. 

  • 100% of our primary packaging is recyclable by design and we are committed to increasing the use of rPET in all our bottles.
  • In 2022, 10.5% of the PET that we used across all our markets was rPET.
  • 22.3% of the PET we used in our EU and Swiss markets was rPET.
  • 100% rPET transition in Switzerland for locally produced portfolio. Austria and Italy* are moving their portfolios to 100% rPET (*excluding water in Italy)
  • 48% of our total primary packaging was collected in 2022 for recycling or reuse.
  • In 2022, we introduced the first label-free branded water packaging in Switzerland, launching three label-free variants of Valser. The distinctive look differentiates our products while improving the ease of package recycling.
  • Our KeelClip™ innovation has allowed us to eliminate plastic packaging from our can multipacks in 22 countries so far, helping us to reduce our plastic packaging footprint.
Strategic_pillars_world_without_waste_776x664 Strategic_pillars_world_without_waste_776x664

Towards a World Without Waste

Click here to discover more about what we are doing to make our packaging more sustainable.

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.

 
Food waste and loss targets

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

 

Food loss and waste data1

Unit of measure

2019

2020

2021

2022

Target 2022

Target 2025

Target 2030

Total weight of food loss and waste with water content (no conversion to dry matter) tonnes 54,154 42,077 32,390 32,139      
Avoided2 food waste (redistributed for human consumption) in dry matter tonnes     25 126      

Total weight of all food loss and waste in dry matter

tonnes

5,445

4,320

3,343

2,193

<3,200

30% reduction vs. 2019

40% 
reduction
vs. 2019

Total weight of food loss and waste used for alternative purposes (in dry matter)

tonnes

1,462

1,572

1,433

1,432      

Redistributed for anaerobic congestion
(on-site waste water treatment or external waste water treatment)

tonnes 132 147 134 295      

Redistributed for land application (composting)

tonnes 214 455 158 145      

Redistributed for energy recovery (biogas/biofuel)

tonnes 1,117 969 1,142 992      

Food loss/waste intensity per tonne
of product sold

tonnes per tonne of product sold

0.00047

0.00039

0.00027

0.00018

<0.01

   

1Egypt acquisition done in January 2022 is excluded.
2Redistribution for human consumption - products close to expiry date, not food waste.