Should businesses get involved in water efficiency initiatives, projects, and programs? What if, by assessing the impact of their operations on regional water resources and global water use, the companies and private interests that rely heavily on water can alter their operations in order to have a positive—rather than negative—impact on water use and local supply? While utilities are charged with collecting, treating, and delivering water, isn’t it really the water user (especially the big water user) who drives and manipulates the market?
Last week, Coca Cola announced a series of initiatives aimed at aiding water resource management and environmental protection in Southeast Asia. While the company has been involved in water projects and programs in the region since 2007, earlier this month the Coca Cola Foundation announced it would donate $4 million to the United Nations Development program (UNDP) Water Stewardship Program in China and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) Yangtze Partnership.
These donations are part of the company’s overall commitment to “Reduce, Recycle, and Replenish.” Coca Cola hopes to advance operations across Asia Pacific so that by 2020, the company can, “safely return to nature and communities an amount of water equivalent to what is used in all of its beverages and their production.” The first part of achieving that goal includes improving water use efficiency by 20% by 2012, while, “also continuing to expand its support of watershed protection and sustainable community water programs in the Pacific region.”
In a statement announcing the donations, Geoff Walsh, Director of the company’s Pacific Group Public Affairs & Communications said, “With over 320 formalized partnerships with civic and government organizations, The Coca-Cola Company today helps protect and conserve water resources in some 86 countries. This is an issue that is integrated with our business worldwide and is a hallmark of our LIVE POSITIVELY systemwide sustainability framework. LIVE POSITIVELY is created on the foundation of our commitment to making a positive difference in the world, and it is embedded within our entire business at every level. The LIVE POSITIVELY framework consists of seven core areas key to our business sustainability: Beverage Benefits; Active Healthy Living; Community; Energy Efficiency and Climate Protection; Sustainable Packaging; Water Stewardship; and Workplace. With these objectives in mind, we will continue leveraging our core competence to address difficult issues in the Pacific region and worldwide, and create enduring, relevant solutions.”
So what do you think? Could this type of corporate commitment be duplicated stateside? While we’ve seen many manufacturing jobs exported to countries with abundant resources and fewer regulations, there are still many large, heavily water-dependent, businesses operating in the US; couldn’t they be tapped to help the communities struggling with water resource management and crumbling infrastructure? Can the private-public partnerships we’ve discussed in the past help us solve our domestic conveyance and collection crisis?