Building a company that achieves global success takes more than a popular product and stellar sales. Sharing values with consumers is vital to brand success, said Brian Kelley, chief product supply officer of Coca-Cola Refreshments. One value that Coca-Cola shares with consumers is sustainability, Kelley said during the Sustainability Summit, hosted by the FMI-GMA Trading Partner Alliance in Washington, D.C. Commitment to sustainability is a valid social purpose for the company, he said, as important as having a valid business purpose. “Sustainability is critical to making sure … we can deliver brand strength,” he said.
One way Coca-Cola continues to appeal to its 200 million customers is through sustainability, and Kelley said the company stays on track by focusing on four pillars.
- Global water stewardship. Kelley said Coca-Cola has kept track of water in every element of its business since 2005, and it has saved more than 3 billion gallons by improving efficiency at facilities.
This week, Dunkin’ Brands Group became the latest big restaurant chain to commit to pork produced without the use of gestation crates, a growing movement that has won commitments from a slew of other restaurant chains and foodservice providers, from McDonald’s and Burger King to Sodexo and ARAMARK, and even supermarket chains such as Kroger and Safeway have promised to make the shift. For Dunkin’ and the other companies, the commitment kicks off a process that starts with requiring their U.S. suppliers to outline a plan to phase out the crates in the coming years, as the Associated Press reported. Realistically, the change won’t come overnight — instead, it will take years for farmers to make the shift.
CNN’s Eatocracy blog wrote a piece in June explaining what the crates are and how they’re used, citing experts on both sides of the argument. The Humane Society of the United States has brought the issue to the forefront. (read more…)
A highly publicized study by Stanford University researchers published in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed key findings that proponents and critics of organic growing have been hotly debating. Day-one reports by mainstream media tended to lead with the finding that organic food doesn’t appear to be any more nutritious than conventionally grown produce and meat.
Another key finding, which likely didn’t make as many headlines because it’s practically common sense, is that food raised organically comes to us with less pesticide and chemical residue.
Is a well-washed locally grown apple better for me than a bag of “organic” corn chips? Of course. But it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison. The New York Times pointed out the real comparison: Are you better off paying more for organically grown strawberries, a fruit a nutritionist I once interviewed called a “pesticide sponge.”
The study found no difference in nutritional value of organic versus conventionally grown strawberries, but it did report a higher pesticide level in the conventionally grown version, and that’s the point that seems to be the jumping-off place for most of the disagreement. (read more…)
The recession brought fresh frugality to many consumers, whose concern about waste had them heading to the grocery more often to make smaller purchases and questioning the sense of bulk buying, according to a study by The Hartman Group. “Lack of waste is a big part of what value means, so we see this a lot in club channels. Consumers are asking, ‘But will I really use it?’ ” President Laurie Demeritt told MediaPost’s Marketing Daily.
Shopping wisely, with an eye on avoiding waste, is one of many words of advice in another report, by the National Resources Defense Council. The report says the U.S. wastes about 40% of its food supply, and it details findings systemwide, from field to store and restaurant to consumer to landfill.
Food production soaks up 80% of the water and 10% of the power used in the U.S. and takes up about half of the land, yet we turn around and toss out about $165 billion worth of uneaten food every year, the report says. (read more…)
This series is sponsored by the Can Manufacturers Institute, where gray is the new green. Want to know the reason? Download our sustainability paper to learn more about how cans stand alone as the sustainable solution for 21st-century packaging. Pass it on. CanCentral.com/sustainability.
When last we saw our can, it had been separated from the piles of plastic, paper, glass and other metals trucked into Waste Management’s single-stream recycling center, baled up and readied for sale to another company that would turn it back into the sheet metal from whence it came.
At Alcoa plants in Tennessee and near Sydney, that’s the next step.
Remember back in December when we first learned how a can was made from giant rolls of aluminum sheeting? Well, the Alcoa plants bring us back to that beginning — they turn recycled cans and virgin aluminum into those giant rolls, creating different thicknesses and strengths for different uses. (read more…)
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