Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., the largest Coca-Cola bottler with operations in North America and western Europe, just released its 2005 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Review. The review is quite interesting (and very well designed) and covers all of the high-level information one might expect.

This review should be of interest to anyone familiar with the recent cola-company scandals in India mentioned earlier. The bottlers involved are different than Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., but it should be interesting to read the review in relation to the specific issues the India bottlers are grappling with. In particular, note the following items from the “Environmental Management System” section:

• Comply with applicable environmental laws and regulations everywhere that we operate
• Establish objectives and targets and conduct auditing to improve our performance on a consistent basis
• Incorporate environmental considerations in our business planning process, including design, production, packaging, transportation and ultimate disposal of materials related to our products
• Work with communities on environmental projects of local benefit

I have yet to do the research but am curious if the India Coca-Cola bottling company has the same level of stated commitment to environmental management and local cooperation.

As an aside, this serves as a good example of a company obviously going through the motions of at least attempting to show greater corporate social responsibility, yet perhaps having its efforts discounted due to the complications another Coca-Cola bottler (and perhaps other cola bottlers) is experiencing.

For the cynical observer, it becomes increasingly easy to pass off multinationals’ CSR efforts as empty PR attempts–a reality that is becoming more commonplace. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the cynics will lose material to fling as the CSR movement matures.

TAGS: CSR | Coke | Coca-Cola | Corporate Responsibility | CSR Report

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Business Ethics, Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, Socially Responsible Investing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.