Greenwash: Are Coke's green claims the real thing?

Coca-Cola has pledged to become 'water neutral'. But what does that actually mean, asks Fred Pearce
Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday December 4 2008 09.57 GMT

Are Coke's environmental claims the real thing? After making a big contribution to the coffers of the World Wildlife Fund, Coca Cola has been pledging to the world that it is going "water neutral", most recently at a business conference in San Francisco this week.
It is an intriguing phrase. But can a company whose products have water as their principal ingredient really go water neutral? And is WWF wise to proclaim Coke as a "partner" – even in return for Coke's contribution of $23m (£15m) to the fund's protection of the world's rivers? Is this greenwash?
Don't get me wrong. Any company that uses a lot of water in its business – and Coke uses 300bn litres a year – should be encouraged to consume less. And we should not necessarily decry their efforts, even if they are less than perfect.
What concerns me is that phrase "water neutral". The company has been using it widely in the 18 months since its hook-up with WWF – notably during the Olympic Games in Beijing, the water-stressed city where Coca Cola was a major event sponsor.
What does the phrase mean? Speaking at WWF's annual meeting last year, Coke's chairman Neville Isdell said it meant the company "pledged to replace every drop of water we use in our beverages and their production: to achieve balance in communities and in nature." The goal, he admitted, is "aspirational". But it is also extremely hard to pin down.
First, the stats. The company is using water more efficiently in many of its operations. It says the amount of water used to make a typical litre of its drinks fell 20% to 2.47 litres, between 2002 and 2007. But if anything, these efforts are faltering. The improvement from 2006 to 2007 was just 2%, the smallest to date.
And because Coca Cola is manufacturing more product every year, its actual overall water use has been rising since 2005 and is now almost back at the 2002 level. This is not to me an obvious sign of the aspiration, still less the reality, of water neutrality.
But definitions are critical. The company admits it won't stop using water. But it promises to carry on using water more efficiently, to ensure that all its wastewater is returned to the environment "at a level that supports aquatic life and agriculture" and, finally and most problematically, to "replenish the water we use".
Replenish looks like the key word. Coke is not promising to be water neutral wherever it operates – which is bad news for the Indian villages that have been complaining that Coca Cola bottling plants are emptying their wells. Instead, it will "replenish" that water somewhere else. How is not so clear. One route will be by funding WWF to protect watersheds round the globe.
Another term for this "replenishing" is water offsets. Just like those carbon offsets that make some companies "carbon neutral".
Some people don't like carbon offsets, but offsetting carbon is, theoretically at least, do-able. This is because carbon dioxide acts globally on the atmosphere. If I emit carbon dioxide into the air somewhere and then offset the emissions by removing a similar amount somewhere else, that is absolutely fine for the atmosphere and for the climate. Job done.
Not so for water. Water is local.
I could, for instance, claim to be water neutral if I pumped dry a village aquifer or a vital oasis in a desert – and then put the same amount of water back into a rainforest river. Like, say, the Mekong, one of the rivers included under Coca Cola's watershed programme with WWF.
Those Indian villagers are unlikely to be appeased by an offset in the Cambodia rainforest. Their wells will still be dry.
Clearly water neutrality is a slippery term, and on paper Coca Cola accepts this. A year ago, a group of water scientists, including Richard Holland from WWF and Greg Koch, Coke's managing director of global water stewardship, wrote a "concept paper" about water neutrality.
They recognised its PR origins. "Water neutral was chosen as an inspirational phrase that resonates with the public," they noted. No other term had "the same gravity or resonance with the media, officials or NGOs."
They added: "For pragmatic reasons it may therefore be attractive ... but there is clearly a need to define the term". They called for a "transparent and inclusive process that will lead to a scientifically sound approach to water neutrality."
That process is certainly not transparent, and I can find no evidence that it has been concluded.
Maybe (though I am sceptical) the scientists can come up with a serviceable definition of water neutrality. One that illuminates rather than obscures, keeps wells full rather than emptying them. But right now there is no agreed definition. So why does Coke insist on using the term? And why is WWF going along with it?
The whole idea of water neutrality is in danger of becoming fatally devalued. And that would be a shame. For water. And for the future environmental reputation of Coca Cola.