The sustainability paradox: Coca-Cola’s push to shape change

Coca-Cola is one of the world’s biggest brands. Its products are sold in nearly every country.

But it’s also one of the biggest targets when it comes to plastic bottles.

So when Joe Franses goes to a dinner party and tells people he’s the chief sustainability officer at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, he’s often met with a little cynicism.

Because – say his fellow diners – how can Coca-Cola possibly be a sustainable company?

1.9 billion servings of drinks every single day

That’s the sustainability paradox. Coca-Cola and its bottlers are about huge volumes of product – and inevitably the environmental impact that comes with it. Yet at the same time, its scale can make it a force for change.

Coca-Cola Europacific Partners is The Coca-Cola Company’s largest bottler: serving some 600 million consumers around the world.

The bottler has been through a huge revamp after Coca-Cola European Partners acquired Coca-Cola Amatil in 2021. That’s meant bringing together European markets on one side of the world (Great Britain, Germany and Spain, for example) with the other (Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines). And it’s also brought together large, highly developed markets with developing ones.

And, of course, it’s not just about brand Coca-Cola: the bottler now has a portfolio ranging from energy drinks to iced tea and from juice to coffee.

One of the reasons Coca-Cola is so frequently under fire when it comes to plastic bottles is its size and scale. Across the world, The Coca-Cola Company sells more than 1.9 billion servings of drinks around the world every single day.

And something has to happen to the packaging that contains them.

So how does Franses handle those inevitable dinner party chats (‘and what do you do for work?’) where the thought of Coca-Cola and a sustainability agenda can be hard for audiences to digest?

“I love that conversation,” he says. “We’re obviously very familiar with the criticism we get. Some of that starts from the conversation about plastic waste, and there’s a huge challenge around plastic waste globally.

“Our starting point is that none of us, no-one working at Coca-Cola, wants to see our packaging end up where it shouldn’t.

“And at the same time, we recognise that far too often it does end up where it shouldn’t: in our oceans, in our waterways, littering our beaches or on the roadside.”

His second point is that Coca-Cola’s packaging is not just about plastic – it’s also about cans and bottles – but he acknowledges the attention is invariably on plastic.

His third point, however, does give many sceptics pause for thought. It’s the idea that plastic has a value, as an entity that can be recycled and reused. That’s why Coca-Cola puts recycling and collection are at the centre of its initiatives.

“We’re at the forefront of collection schemes across all of our markets,” he explains. “We’ve got a very strong, positive supportive advocacy position on things like Deposit Return Schemes (DRS), for example, which are gradually being put in place across our markets.

“We very much support extended producer responsibility, where producers like us take responsibility for the packaging they put on the market. And that’s what we’re trying to build in some of our developing markets - those that probably are never going to have deposit return schemes because they don’t have that kind of infrastructure.”

Such projects have had huge success in markets such as Germany and Scandinavia, where as much as 95% of PET bottles are collected and recycled.

Franses’ fourth point is that Coca-Cola is surprisingly local. Yes, The Coca-Cola Company is headquartered in Atlanta, but each bottler manufactures drinks locally (in the UK, 90% of drinks consumed are produced at one of six manufacturing locations across England and Scotland).

But his most important message? Coca-Cola’s size and scale means the company has the ability to drive change.

“Yes, we are the poster child for a lot of the global challenges around plastic waste,” he says. “But I would argue that we’re also in a fortunate position there is much we can do to ensure our packaging is collected.

Take the DRS scheme coming into place in Great Britain. “It is genuinely going to be a once -in-a-generation opportunity to get to a place where single use plastic beverage packaging and cans can come back in much, much higher volumes than they already do.”

The golden triangle of business, NGOs and policy

Franses has spent his career working in sustainability. And one thing he realised early on was that business has a role to play in crafting solutions to the big global challenges.

“Some people will say the challenges are for policy makers to fix,” he said. “Others will say policy makers are never going to act and it’s for the NGOs.

“And my view is that business has a huge role to play.

“So we have this golden triangle of business, civil society and policy. And if you get that right, that’s when things really happen.

“My own path into sustainability was to understand that, actually, if these things are going to be tackled, then business has a really, really important role to play.”

That ‘golden triangle’ has never been more important.

“What we’re seeing at the moment is that sustainability is not a linear journey,” he said. “You don’t start there and end here. There’s lots of bumps in the road.

“We’re also going through a bit of a sustainability reset at the moment where companies are maybe saying less about what they’re doing, but they’re just getting on with it."

Driving change

So how can Coca-Cola act as a powerful force for driving change?

“The first and most important thing is we absolutely cannot do it alone,” said Franses.

“Obviously Coca-Cola is a big business, but we can’t work alone. So all of this comes back to collaboration. When you look across the sustainability agenda, whether it’s water or packaging or decarbonization or supporting our communities to enhance the skills for a greener future, none of that can be done by working alone.

“So partnerships are fundamental, and whether that’s through our trade associations, or working in partnership with customers.”

Such collaborations can take many forms, and can be big or small.

So collaboration is important. But where can Coca-Cola take the lead?

Creating standards for its suppliers and peers and companies across the supply chain is a focus area, says Franses.

“Setting science-based emissions reduction targets, I think, is fundamental,” he said. “Then leading on from that is supplier engagement for scope 3 emissions.

“That means making sure that our suppliers can follow our lead on science-based targets, follow our lead on renewable electricity, begin to share their data with us so we can get a really good granular understanding of where our emissions sit within the value chain.

“I think that kind of leadership is absolutely key. Taking a leadership position on deposit return schemes, taking a leadership position on extended producer responsibility, setting up voluntary collection schemes in markets like some of the Pacific islands, where we know we’ve got so much more to do, but taking that first step, establishing voluntary partnerships, that’s fundamental.”

CCEP, for example, has pledged to reduce emissions across its entire business and value chain to reach net zero by 2040: across scope 1, 2 and 3.

More pressing: by 2030, CCEP wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30%.

To achieve these goals, it will be both about setting those targets, exploring new climate technologies through CCEP Ventures, and working with suppliers to encourage and support their own emission-reduction plans.

“There’s lots of things still to happen to meet that 30% but we’re headed in the right direction,” says Franses.

And it’s about the money.

“We’re putting significant finance behind this. Our ‘This is Forward’ plan, for example, is backed by around €385m of planned investment in decarbonisation over a three-year-period. All of our targets have really comprehensive 2030 roadmaps to ensure that they’re credible, they’re feasible, they can be delivered.”

Appreciating the complexities

Back to the dinner party. Does Franses manage to convince his fellow diners that Coca-Cola can be a force for good in sustainability?

“Some people will never be convinced, and that’s understandable,” he acknowledges. “But I think the vast majority of people that we speak to understand the complexities of the industry in which we work. They understand and recognize the progress that we’re making, which is great.

“And I think they, like us, realise these aren’t things we can solve alone. These are some big global societal challenges. We’ve supported a global plastics treaty because we know it’s a systemic global challenge. We’ve supported science-based targets because we encourage everyone, including our suppliers, to do the same.

“So no, we’re never going to convince everyone. But I think that the conversations we have give us real hope that, actually, people want to join us in solving some of these challenges, recognize we’ve got some answers but not all the answers, and also recognize the progress we’re making.”