Water Resource Usage

Water is an essential ingredient in the process of making and bottling Coca-Cola products. However, like many of our other resources, water is becoming scarce because of overexploitation. It has been predicted that by 2025, 2/3 of the world population will be facing water scarcity (Walsh & Dowding, 2012). Many companies do not consider the side effects of their production on the surrounding environment, Coke being one of those companies. For instance, the Coca-Cola bottling factory located in India was accused of depleting ground water

resources in the surrounding areas in 2003, causing water scarcity for the citizens and water pollution through inappropriate waste water disposal (Hills & Welford, 2005). Indian government reacted by making it illegal to withdraw ground water unless it was for domestic or agricultural purposes. Coca-Cola did not fall under this category as they were withdrawing 510,000 liters of ground water a day for their industry and then shipping the products containing that water outside of the country to be sold, therefore breaking the natural water cycle (Hills & Welford, 2005). But the debate of whether Coca-Cola should abandon their factory and if they really did contribute to groundwater depletion went one for a few years.

Since then, and after receiving a lot of heat from the water issue in India, the Coca-Cola Company has made some progress in their water management. They created a corporate goal in 2008 for 2020 to have equal return of water consumed in the bottling process and the products themselves back to nature and the community (Sun, 2011). They have made some progress toward this goal by working in conjunction with the World Wildlife Foundation in 2013 to create Water Protection Plans for all of Coca-Cola’s bottling facilities and increasing their water efficiency by 12.6% between 2004 and 2009 (Walsh & Dowding, 2012). But this does not address the issue of breaking the natural water cycle of the regions that have Coca-Cola bottling facilities.