Beverages South Africa
Beverages South Africa Building a more sustainable future Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa believes in collaboration to ensure water sustainability. We are focused on delivering on our purpose, to accelerate conserve habitats for plants and our collective action to address challenges that impact animals and offer opportunities for our business and the communities we serve. local economic development. Our approach is centred around people. While the As part of this work, we Since inception, over By the end of 2023, In 2023 alone, focus must be on how best to achieve key sustainability goals, as a collaborate Three with partners community to 811 million collective we litres need to be mindful over in 1.2 our billion responses of the varied needs over understand gardens the complex have link been have and changing been circumstances litres of communities of water was around us. between water, climate, agriculture The answer lies in collaboration and co-creation of sustainable 30 000 integrated to the Coke replenished through and biodiversity. solutions. As the Coca-Cola replenished system, we use back our to industry leadership to In addition, Ville many systems of our providing water the Coke Ville be part of the solution to the achieve environment positive change and and to build a more replenishment local projects women have with project sustainable in the future for our communities planet. through in 5 provinces additional co-benefits enterprise such as Eastern Importantly, Cape, we want both to create Coke greater Ville shared and opportunity for the helping to improve opportunities soil health, and Gauteng, business and Free the communities we serve, across our value chain. sequester carbon, conserve water, Watershed contributing to food State, KwaZulu- restore degraded lands, contribute Water Restoration Projects. to biodiversity security and and mitigate poverty Natal Water and is Limpopo a priority for the Coca-Cola system because it is essential to life, climate change. alleviation. Provinces. our beverages and the communities we serve. We are focused on accelerating The Coca-Cola Company’s 2030 Water Security Strategy focuses on the actions needed to increase water increasing water security by investing in water initiatives that benefit security where we operate, source nature and communities. ingredients and touch people’s lives. This includes projects that provide benefits to local watersheds that We do that by contributing towards supply water for drinking, agriculture and manufacturing, restore and sustainable, clean water access that EASTERN CAPE BUSINESS 2024 44
improves livelihoods and wellbeing while protecting against waterrelated disasters. We continue to replenish the water we use in our finished beverages to nature and communities. We have set three key goals designed to achieve our vision: • Achieve 100% regenerative water use across our facilities in areas identified as facing high levels of water stress by 2030 • Improve the health of watersheds identified as most critical for our operations and agricultural supply chain by 2030 • Continue to return water to nature and communities. Ensuring the health of watersheds is a major part of this. For example, as CCBSA we successfully implemented Project Lungisa in Grabouw in the Western Cape, where the municipality was losing a significant amount of its potable water due to leaks and failing infrastructure. Through this partnership, we trained young community members in plumbing to support the rehabilitation of water infrastructure, including fixing leaks in informal areas. In response to a looming Day Zero in parts of the Eastern Cape, CCBSA launched an ambitious project to work with the local municipality and other key stakeholders to assist vulnerable and distressed communities. Since 2020, CCBSA deployed off-grid, solar-powered groundwater harvesting and treatment initiative called Cokevilles. In the region, a total of nine systems, or boreholes, have been deployed in Gqeberha with a potential of replenishing a minimum of 90-million litres per annum at no cost to the beneficiaries. Last year the company unveiled a R12-million groundwater harvesting Cokeville project, to supply the entire town of Graaff Reinet in the Eastern Cape with potable water. The Cokeville megaproject was installed to feed directly into the municipality’s infrastructure and is able to supply between 27-million and 30-million litres of water every month to the town and surrounding communities. Since the inception of our borehole groundwater harvesting programme, we have managed to replenish hundreds of millions of litres of water in Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Free State and the Eastern Cape provinces, benefitting thousands of households. Building resilience through partnerships and innovation We understand that no entity can solve the water challenges alone. We believe in collective action and partnership to tackle development issues. It is important that all relevant stakeholders have a voice, an investment and a shared understanding of the outcomes to ensure we deal with the lack of access to safe water. As CCBSA we believe in and are committed to solution-driven conversations for a better future for all. ■ 45 EASTERN CAPE BUSINESS 2024
