Coke to cut water use ...

Excerpt from Sydney Morning Herald:

Coke to cut water use

June 7 2007

Coca-cola has pledged to reduce the amount of water it uses to produce its beverages and to improve water recycling in bottling plants around the world.

"We are focusing on water because this is where the Coca-Cola Company can have a real and positive impact," the company's chief executive officer, E. Neville Isdell, said in Beijing on Tuesday.

Last year, Coca-Cola and its bottlers used about 288 billion litres of water, with more than half used for cleaning, rinsing and cooling.

Mr Isdell said the company would set specific targets for water use from next year, with the goal of becoming "the most efficient user of water amongst our peer companies".

Coca-Cola has been under pressure over its water use in drought-stricken countries.

In 2003, a court in the southern Indian state of Kerala ordered it to stop drawing ground water at a bottling plant.

See - Coke to clean up its act.