Coca-Cola India's Water Stewardship Strategy

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COCA-COLA’S INDIA WATER STRATEGY
Coca-Cola is the global leader in beverage manufacturing. It is worth $200 billion with yearly sales of about $40 billion from its subsidiaries in over 200 nations (Bywater, 2015, 98). The company established a subsidiary in India in 1993. By 2008, it had established 24 and 25 bottling plants of its own as well as franchisees. It sells brands like Sprite, Fanta and Coke alongside powdered concentrates, energy drinks, Kinley mineral water and Thums Up. Being a large beverage company, it impacts the environment in numerous ways via air conditioning equipment, vending machines, green gas emission, effluent discharge, higher levels of energy use, discharge of wastewater and excess levels of water use among others. Owing to these impacts, the company has attracted criticism from many quarters. Protests rose against Coca-Cola’s Indian subsidiaries for impacting the environment. The increasing concerns prompted the company to increase its corporate social responsibility initiatives to act as a responsible firm and lower its environmental impact. Among the initiatives was the water strategy. This essay presents Coca-Cola India’s water strategy and details how the management’s and employees’ are acting to contribute to the community and the society at large.
Like numerous companies, Coca-Cola integrated CSR to safeguard its reputation and the revenue of its brand and goods. To do this, the company has partnered with environmental groups, completed sustainability reports and integrated international labor standards. The corporation goes on expanding its CSR agenda to solve the social opposition it experiences when big anti-Coke movements rise. For instance, protests started in India in 2002 and spread across the globe and motivated other movements in Europe and the US. The first protests against Coca-Cola India’s subsidiaries began when Kerala’s villages confirmed that the firm depleted as well as polluted its land and ground water resources (Aiyer, 2007, 644). The protesters claimed that their environmental issues started after Coca-Cola established its plant in the area. They presented that the company had destroyed their livelihoods and privatized the community’s ground water (Bywater, 2015, 98). Other protests followed around bottling plants in Sivaganga, Bihar, Ballia, Rajasthan, Kaladera, Uttar Pradesh and Mehndiganj. This made the company realize that it had to continue incorporating CSR to manage its corporate legitimacy.
Owing to these protests, Coca-Cola Company started to look for ways to get access to enough amounts of water to satisfy the current as well as the future requirements in an environmentally, economically and socially accountable manner in the middle of an upcoming world water problem with the risks that exceed the environment, industry as well as communities. Via a business case that focuses on productivity, risk management and sustainability and via integration of a strategic background that relies on water mass balance at the business level, the company started initiatives that backed the replenishment of sustainable water balances at the watershed and community levels whereas creatin...