Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) has adopted a value chain approach to water stewardship to address water scarcity and water quality challenges.
Water is one of the world’s most precious resources, however, climate change is exacerbating water stress and water scarcity in many parts of the world.
Lisa Rippon Lee, Vice President of Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability, Australia at CCEP, said that water is a precious resource and critical to the business.
“It’s the main ingredient in our products, essential to our manufacturing processes and critical to ensuring a sustainable supply of the agricultural ingredients we depend upon.
“Our stewardship of this precious resource is not only a key pillar of our sustainability strategy, it’s something our manufacturing teams are proactively implementing each day,” she said.
With the goal of optimising water efficiency at its production facility at Richlands, Queensland – its largest operations site in Australia by footprint – CCEP recently partnered with water technology firm Ecolab.
Together, they’ve created a roadmap that will see the Richlands factory save more than 282 million litres of water each year, reducing water usage at the site by 37.8 per cent.
Turning insights into action, they will also save more than 258 million litres of wastewater, 1500 tonnes of greenhouse gases and 9000 gigajoules of energy annually.
Water initiatives at the site at Northmead, NSW also continue to drive improvements to the facility’s Water-Usage-Ratio.
At Northmead, clean water from two of the beverage blenders is currently being collected, treated, and re-used. The are also actively collecting rainwater at the site that can be used sustainably for washdown activities that are critical to food safety.
Collectively, these initiatives reduce the annual water usage at Northmead by two Olympic-sized swimming pools (or 2.5 million litres) per year.