The Coca-Cola Company

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company provides evidence of linking performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member wherever it operates.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has committed to reducing its scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25% by 2030, compared to the levels recorded in 2015. Furthermore, it aims to achieve net zero by 2050.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company is actively engaged in efforts to reduce plastic use and adopt sustainable packaging practices while providing related quantitative data. Additionally, the company has established specific targets to enhance the proportion of recycled content in its plastic packaging and promote the use of reusable or refillable containers. It regularly reports on the progress made towards these goals.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health and agrobiodiversity by applying the principles for Sustainable Agriculture (PSA) to all its agricultural products and packaging materials of agricultural origin. Furthermore, it sets specific requirements for suppliers to maintain and improve soils and prevent degradation while implementing a nutrient management plan.

Water withdrawal
The company reports the amount of water it withdraws for its own operations in water-stressed areas. Additionally, it actively collaborates with suppliers to minimize water withdrawal.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses that it provides front-of-pack energy/calorie information, yet it has the chance to implement an interpretive government-endorsed front-of-pack labelling system.

Responsible marketing
The company has a responsible marketing policy tailored to children.

Child labour
The company verifies the ages of workers during its recruitment processes, and it has initiated a project in Turkey designed to implement a range of measures aimed at preventing the employment of child labour. This project not only ensures the verification of worker ages but also actively supports supplier training and the implementation of child remediation systems within their operational protocols.

Forced labour
The company underscores its dedication to responsible recruitment in the supply chain by transparently sharing its approach. This encompasses conducting specialized training and capacity-building programs for suppliers and other business partners. For instance, the company collaborated with peers from the AIM-PROGRESS regional Asia Pacific hub to orchestrate a virtual series on responsible recruitment capacity building in Malaysia.

Land rights
The company has a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data. Also, it discloses a policy on bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contractual agreements with business relationships. Furthermore, it describes its processes for identifying and addressing bribery and corruption and a grievance mechanism allowing stakeholders to raise related concerns.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses a policy commitment to respecting the health and safety of workers for its operations and supply chain and provides evidence of how it monitors its suppliers’ performance on health and safety standards. Concerning a living wage, it describes how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates.

Additionally, the company commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment and discloses related targets and the representation of women on the highest governance body, which is 50% women on board. Furthermore, it discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category and that of its total direct operations workforce for each employee category by race or ethnicity.

Respect human rights
The company discloses a policy statement committing to respecting human rights and describes a comprehensive process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities and supply chain.

Also, it further describes its processes for assessing its human rights risks and discloses what it considers to be its salient human rights issues. Additionally, the company provides a case study describing how it has acted on a salient human rights risk issue. Lastly, it engages with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities and indicates that it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
While the company states that its trade association is aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement, it has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Furthermore, it could report (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities and to describe its process, including frequencies and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups beyond materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
The company currently shares specific sustainability objectives, particularly in the areas of climate and social inclusion. Nonetheless, there is room for improvement by implementing comprehensive group-wide targets for the most material aspects of its value chain. While it does report on select targets, such as those concerning social inclusion and plastic usage, there is an opportunity to enhance consistency in reporting across all its sustainability goals.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company can seize the opportunity to establish clear, time-bound targets for lowering its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with regular progress reporting. Furthermore, there is potential for the company to address its scope 3 GHG emissions, establish specific targets, and transparently report on progress in achieving them. Additionally, aligning its GHG emissions reduction goals with a 1.5-degree trajectory presents a significant opportunity for improving performance in environmental sustainability.

Ecosystem conversion
While the company discloses some evidence of addressing conversion, it could specify how its practices are DCF-aligned. Although it has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, the certification models specified are not DCF-aligned.

Food loss and waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and report progress against them. Additionally, it can align its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and report progress against it.

Water withdrawal
The company has the opportunity to provide quantitative evidence of reductions in water withdrawal within its own operations. Additionally, it can disclose a related time-bound target and report on its progress towards the latter.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has disclosed that between 2017 and 2022, it reduced over 900,000 tons of added sugar from its global range of beverages through more than 1,000 reformulations. Additionally, they have stated that 29% of their sales volume in 2022 consisted of low- or no-calorie options.
Moving forward, the company has an opportunity to implement a nutrient profiling system that aligns with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of products for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Responsible marketing
The company has an opportunity to provide evidence of marketing activities to promote healthier and more nutritious food options, in accordance with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

Child labour
The company has the chance to showcase examples of remediation programs in cases where child labor is discovered in its operations. Additionally, the company already has expectations in place regarding the prohibition of child labor and the use of age verification for its suppliers, but it could also consider disclosing any related policy requirements. Furthermore, the company has the opportunity to provide an analysis of trends that demonstrate its progress in eliminating child labor from its supply chain.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company describes intiatives and partnerships that support farmers to adopt sustainable agriculture practices but it has an opportunity to demonstrate how it improves farmers’ income resilience through its procurement practices and supply chain relationships. Also, it could identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company does not charge any recruitment fees to migrant workers and does not keep their personal identity documents. It also ensures that workers are not restricted in their freedom of movement or obligated to use company-provided accommodations. Additionally, the company prohibits the retention of personal identity documents, and recruitment fees for all workers on the farm. However, it could extend these commitments to all the workers within its value chain and disclose those in policy documents.

Land rights
The company could require its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company discloses that it has partnered with Business for Social Responsibility to conduct a living wage gap analysis across its global offices and company-owned manufacturing sites. While it discloses that the majority of its own operations meet or exceed the BSR living wage benchmark, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or direct suppliers that are paid a living wage. Also, it could set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources.

Act ethically
While the company outlines its approach to lobbying and political engagement on its website, it has an opportunity to formalise this approach in a public policy document. Also, it states that it makes political contributions in the US. However, it could describe whether these are made only by exception, and the criteria for making them. Furthermore, the company could disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities and its requirement for third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company could disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or state that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage and describe how it works to support its suppliers in paying a living wage. Furthermore, it could disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect specific workers’ rights in its operations and supply chain but has an opportunity to reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work. Additionally, it states that it takes appropriate actions to cease, prevent or mitigate possible adverse impacts of identified human rights risks. However, it could disclose a global system to act on all its salient human rights issues in all its activities.