Coca-Cola hopes to win green at Vancouver Olympics

By Jeremiah McWilliams

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It wasn’t so long ago that Coca-Cola Co.’s efforts to go green at the Olympic Games had critics seeing red.

At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, Greenpeace accused the company of breaking the ground rules for the “Green Games” by using coolers that released ozone-depleting materials into the atmosphere.

Ten years later, Coca-Cola is back at the Olympics and louder than ever about its environmental ambitions. At this month’s winter games in Vancouver, Coca-Cola touts a headline-grabbing goal of zero waste, saying it will create what amounts to a closed environmental loop. It is using the global bullhorn of the Olympics to make its case.

The plans for Vancouver include most of Coca-Cola’s supply chain and include some elements that will flow to the rest of the company:

--Coca-Cola beverages sold at the Games will be packaged in PlantBottles, made partly from sugar cane and molasses, which can be processed through existing manufacturing and recycling facilities. Coca-Cola plans to roll out the material for the Dasani water brand and two-liter Coke packages in western states this year.

--Coca-Cola will deliver and store drinks in hybrid trucks, electric carts and coolers that reduce energy usage by about 40 percent and also give off fewer hydrofluorocarbons than standard coolers. HFCs are labeled as powerful greenhouse gases. Coca-Cola has promised that each of its new coolers and vending machines will be HFC-free by 2015.

-- Bottles will be recovered in hundreds of recycling bins in Vancouver, and compactors will mash them on site. To save fuel, delivery trucks will use their return trips to carry the compacted trash to recycling facilities.

-- Delivery drivers will wear uniforms made partly from recycled bottles. Bottles sold at the game will be recycled into clothing and given to a Vancouver homeless shelter.

“If we are going to be a company that is responsible, we have no choice,” said Thierry Borra, Coca-Cola’s director of Olympic games management. “Our customers are paying more and more attention.”

Observers haven’t always liked what they have seen from Coca-Cola, the world’s biggest beverage company. Three years ago, the International Environmental Law Research Center accused it of violating human rights by harming supplies of agricultural and drinking water in India.

In the U.S., bottled water, of which Coca-Cola is a large purveyor, attracts criticism for the amount of plastic bottles that end up in landfills.

Coca-Cola is “taking on a lot of initiatives just to mask a product that’s bad for the environment,” said Kristin Urquiza, campaign director of “Think Outside the Bottle,” a branch of Corporate Accountability International that lobbies against bottled water.

Coca-Cola considers much of the criticism out of step with its recent record. The company said it improved its water use efficiency by 9 percent and its energy use efficiency by 10 percent between 2004 and 2008. In 2009, it collected or recovered the equivalent of more than 35 percent of its bottles and cans.

Coca-Cola has used the Olympic games in Sydney, Athens and Turin to announce new technologies and environmental initiatives. But the company says it is more ambitious now, and it has won some unlikely fans.

“Here we are, and they’ve done something fantastic,” said Amy Larkin, director of Greenpeace Solutions, pointing to Coke’s use of coolers that limit output of ozone-depleting compounds. “For a variety of reasons, they put in the requisite time, energy and money. They’ve made a commitment that we actively endorse.”

Coca-Cola executives say Vancouver is only one step.

“The key for us is how we can apply what we’re doing here to our normal business,” said Borra. “We’re not just doing this for two weeks.”

Other beverage companies also are trying to boost their green credibility.

Over the Super Bowl weekend, PepsiCo put 35 HFC-free coolers around Miami as part of a pilot project to upgrade its equipment. PepsiCo exceeds Coca-Cola on the use of recycled content resin in plastic bottles, according to a 2008 report by San Francisco-based advocacy group As You Sow. (The report scored Coca-Cola highest among its peers in overall environmentalism, however.)

With its latest iteration of the Eco-Shape bottle, Nestle Waters North America -- seller of Deer Park, Poland Spring and other brands -- leads the industry in limiting the plastic in each bottle, said Kenneth Scott.

“That offers a challenge to Coke,” said Scott, portfolio manager at Walden Asset Management. The Coke shareholder has pushed the company to limit its use of plastic.

Borra, Coke’s man on the ground in Vancouver, said the company sees a link between environmental stewardship and business. “On the environmental side, we have a much more robust plan than we’ve had in the past,” he said. “The important thing for us is to see improvement. That is a good reward.”