Coca-Cola has launched a plan to reduce the greenhouse gases it generates by 30% by 2030 and achieve full decarbonization in the following decade.

The factory located in the Huesca town of Vilas de Turbon is since September 2021 the first Coca-Cola plant in Spain certified as net zero emissions. It uses renewable electrical energy, has LED lighting and thermal insulation to avoid heat losses. The plant has reduced its emissions by 36% per liter of product manufactured in the last five years.

Coca-Cola is working on a new Zero product. It is about the strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040, an action plan with concrete measures to achieve net zero emissions, which began in 2010 and that Coca-Cola plans to complete within two decades. To achieve this, it has set the following objectives: use renewable energy in its plants, increase the amount of recycled PET plastic in packaging and reduce its weight, increase the existing 70% of state-of-the-art and therefore more efficient refrigerators, replace delivery vehicles powered by fossil fuels by others powered by electricity, use the railroad as an alternative means of transport and ensure that 100% of the ingredients used in the production of beverages come from sustainable sources.

Taking into account that more than 90% of the emissions generated by Coca-Cola are those over which it does not have direct control, such as transport and distribution, cold equipment or packaging, Coca-Cola will work with its suppliers to to use 100% renewable energy by 2023 and share their carbon footprint data.

These are some of the points of the strategy:

The containers contain 25% recycled PET, an amount that rises up to 50% in the case of still drinks and juices. In 2022 Coca-Cola wants to raise this amount to 50% in the packaging of all beverages.
Coca-Cola has lightened plastic, aluminum and glass containers, saving 22,000 tons of virgin material per year.

Aluminum cans weigh 60% less than thirty years ago. The weight of the Contour refillable glass bottle, the most iconic of the Coca-Cola brand, has been reduced by 21% compared to 2000. The 2-liter plastic bottle weighs 35% less than in 2010.
Coca-Cola has anticipated the requirements of the European regulation on single-use plastics and has developed the caps attached to the bottles, which facilitate the recycling of all the components of the containers.

To eliminate unnecessary and difficult-to-recycle plastic, Coca-Cola has launched the “CanColla system for the Balearic market. These are groupers of containers made with recyclable cardboard with forest certification.

If reducing the weight of packaging results in a lower carbon footprint by being able to transport a greater quantity of beverages in the same vehicle, the use of sustainable means of transport reduces emissions to a minimum.

Another of the actions that Coca-Cola has undertaken has been to give more and more prominence to transport by train. Thus, it has used 700 rail routes in Western Europe this year, double the number in 2020.

All suppliers of ingredients and elements used in packaging that come from agriculture, such as sugar or paper, comply with Coca-Cola‘s guiding principles for sustainable agriculture. It is about 24 principles and the issues that are addressed have to do with working conditions, water and soil management, the use of fertilizers, the conservation of natural habitats and ecosystems or the proper treatment of animals.