Ecos, Coca-Cola Deliver Sustainability Solutions to Restaurants

March 23, 2009

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With the help of Ecos Business Solutions, Coca-Cola is sharing what it has learned through its own sustainability efforts with restaurant customers to encourage more sustainable business practices. Part of the effort includes an online Sustainability Resource Center hosted on Coca-Cola’s customer partner site.

Ecos provided no-cost/low-cost solutions for becoming more sustainable, as well as educational resources and an online assessment tool. The company also introduced its new “Restaurant Solutions” to Coca-Cola customers, which consists of three tiers of services ranging from education and benchmarking to full audits and multi-year action plans. These services focus on making operations more sustainable in the areas of energy, water, packaging and facilities.

These efforts are based on the Ecos and Coca-Cola partnership in 2008 to help The Holland Inc., a Northwest restaurant company, implement energy- and water-saving initiatives at its Burgerville restaurants. The success story is touted in a video found here.

Building on its sustainability efforts, Coca-Cola recently released a study on how packaging accounts for 30-70 percent of the drink’s carbon footprint. The company’s carbon footprint reduction initiatives include the addition of energy-efficient coolers, LED lighting in warehouses, wind turbine installations in Wakefield, England, and solar panels at a California distribution center.

The beverage company also added 185 hybrid trucks to its fleet, boosting the total number to 327, and announced the completion of lighting retrofits at its California facilities, which will save 5.6 million kilowatt-hours annually.

In May of 2008, the Green Restaurant Association partnered with PepsiCo on a sustainability initiative for restaurants.

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Reader Comments

Well, this is just nauseating. Probably one of the worst cases of greenwashing I’ve seen yet. If Coca-cola were at all concerned about sustainability, they might start with mitigating their rapid draining of water supplies in bottling plants in the US and the developing world. Not to mention the caustic, toxic effluent from these bottling plants into communities that rely on surface water to drink, bathe, wash clothes, etc. Coke is consistently one of the most environmentally insensitive corporations world wide, and this reeks of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Stephanie | March 24th, 2009

This is our world. Watch the ‘AIG’ of beverages now destroy our environment! They are doing everything ‘inside’ the law to decieve – just like the banks – but it doesn’t make it right! Hire a ’spin doctor’ to educate people on the obvious? Coca-Cola’s energy policy for society at large? – “shut off the lights when you leave a room and – oh drink Coke!” Stepanie below nailed it! They steal water from developing countries and sell it elsewhere for an insane profit! Claim to recycle all bottles – ya that’s going to happen. Create a ‘one time use’ container for water – that uses 2-3 times as much water in it’s production than it can hold!!! We all nod and carry on – my excuse? I’m Canadian – but for the strong willed US – you guys have ne excuse!:):) Where is the Tim Geithner of the environment??????
Here I’ll solve the entire problem right here – right now — TAKE ‘RECYCLE’ out of the Mobius Loop and replace it with ‘REFILL” — REDUCE, REUSE, REFILL!

Tim | March 24th, 2009