LimnoTech, along with partners, supports the development and implementation of The Coca-Cola Company’s water strategy and its 2035 water goals.
Coca-Cola cans and bottles lined up on a counter.

Location:
Global

Client:
The Coca-Cola Company

Service Areas:

Our Expert:

Since 2015, The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) has been returning safe water to communities and nature, replenishing more than 100% of the water used in its finished products globally (1). As one of the first companies to set a volumetric water goal focused beyond the facility boundaries, the Company has been guided by science-based methodologies that quantify replenish benefits and measure progress towards its water strategy.

The Challenge

LimnoTech, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), supported TCCC in developing replenish methodologies. We identified activities that would generate replenish benefits, conducted an extensive literature review, evaluated available methods, and developed new methods for quantifying the replenish benefit of water stewardship activities. The scientifically based methods for calculating volumetric replenish benefits were described and published in a peer-reviewed journal paper authored by LimnoTech, TCCC, and TNC. LimnoTech also conducted replenish training workshops for TCCC and partners around the world and supported the development of relevant guidance documents.

In 2016 (based on 2015 data), TCCC announced that it had exceeded its initial goal to replenish its water use globally, and it has continued to reach this ambition every year since. With support from LimnoTech and other partners, TCCC achieved this goal early by participating in and funding a diversity of projects involving watershed protection and conservation, drinking water and sanitation access, and water for productive use.

  • TCCC’s 2035 water goals focus on water security where it operates: Aim to return more than 100% of the water used in finished products globally, on an aggregate level, to nature and communities.
  • Seek to return 100% of the total water used in each of the more than 200 high-risk locations across the Coca-Cola system.

The Outcome

At a programmatic level, LimnoTech, along with other partners, supported the development and implementation of TCCC’s previous water strategy, and currently assists TCCC with its 2035 water goals. Our technical assistance includes facilitating project identification, quantification, validation, verification, and external reporting. To date, LimnoTech has quantified, validated, and/or verified over 500 replenish projects located on six continents.

LimnoTech routinely conducts training and supports the development of guidance documents on replenish to its partners.

Finally, in response to interest from other companies, and with support from TCCC and other companies, LimnoTech helped author the foundational guidance document on Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA), which incorporated and expanded on the methodology developed by LimnoTech, TNC, and TCCC to quantify volumetric water benefits from water stewardship projects. Most recently, LimnoTech, along with a team of others (World Resources Institute, Bonneville Environmental Foundation, and Bluerisk), is developing an update to VWBA (VWBA 2.0) to provide additional guidance requested by corporate funders and implementing partners related to volumetric water benefit accounting, tracking, and reporting.

Projects

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