FDBusiness.com

Coca-Cola Hellenic, one of Europe’s leading bottlers of non-alcoholic beverages, has further strengthened the rigorous reporting and verification of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities across operations in 28 countries. Coca-Cola Hellenic is the first European food and beverage company to reach an ‘A+’ rating, according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for its CSR report.

Its just published 2010 CSR report, ‘Towards Sustainability’, has been reviewed by an external Stakeholder Review Panel which provided input and a critical assessment of the report’s strengths and improvement opportunities. In addition, the company stated that the auditor denkstatt carried out an independent third-party validation of the contents in accordance with the international standards AA1000 (2008) and GRI (Global Reporting Initiative).

Among initiatives reported by Coca-Cola Hellenic are -increased efforts to combat climate change. Beyond the construction of three Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants during the year, which will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 66% at each facility, the company has now launched a programme to install solar panels on rooftops.

Energy-saving activities also involve improving efficiency of power use in bottling operations, transportation, and cold drink equipment which is progressively being replaced with models which are free of HFCs and are up to 63% more energy-efficient than previous coolers, substantially cutting CO2 emissions.

Another primary environmental focus is protection of water resources. More than 97% of wastewater was treated at bottling plants in 2010, and systems put in place enabled the re-use and recycling of 1.2 billion litres of water in production processes.

Coca-Cola Hellenic is one of the world’s largest bottlers of products of The Coca-Cola Company with sales of more than two billion unit cases, and 560 million customers buying its products annually.