Coca‑Cola HBC again named Europe’s most sustainable beverage company

The 2019 Dow Jones Sustainability Index – a leading global benchmark for sustainability in business – has rated Coca‑Cola HBC Europe’s most sustainable beverage company. This is the 6th time in 7 years that the company has been ranked number 1 in the index and the 9th year in a row that it has been ranked in the top three Global and European beverage companies.

Maximum scores in 11 categories and positive improvements in 9 others contributed to an overall score of 90, which ranked the company second in the global ranking.

Commenting on the achievement, CEO Zoran Bogdanovic said: “We are honoured and proud that the commitment of our employees and partners to sustainable practices has again resulted in this recognition. We are well aware though that this is just a snapshot. In reality, the work never stops and there is always more to be done. That’s why we put so much focus on the consistent, long-term delivery of our sustainability goals.”

2018 sustainability highlights that contributed to our score

• We achieved our science-based commitment to reduce carbon emissions in our value chain by 25% (compared with 2010), two years ahead of the 2020 target date. In other words, we have saved 1.27 million tonnes of carbon emissions;
• We achieved an employee engagement score of 88%, above the average of FTSE 100 companies
• 37% of management roles are now held by women, our target is 50% by 2025;
• 98% of our €3.237m supplier spend was local, supporting employment and businesses in the countries in which we operate, while we contributed €328m in taxes to local economies.
• We invested €7.9m in community projects, of which more than one third in our flagship Youth Empowered programme to help young people develop business acumen and personal life skills;
• We reduced the amount of water used in production by 22% in our manufacturing plants (compared to 2010);
• We successfully recovered the equivalent of 45% of the total primary packaging we placed in the market for recycling.

Mission Sustainability

We launched our 2025 sustainability commitments in September 2018 to address six key areas: reducing emissions; water use and stewardship; World Without Waste; ingredients sourcing; nutrition; and our people and communities. The full commitments can be viewed here. We have already made good progress and are on track to meet these.

Coca‑Cola HBC’s sustainability performance is also recognised by other respected industry rankings, such as the CDP Climate Disclosure, the MSCI ESG Rating and the FTSE4Good Index.