Environment

We have a responsible approach to every aspect of our business and aim to minimise our environmental footprint.

Environmental policy

Our relationship to the environment is fundamental to our sustainable development. That is why we constantly strive, to the maximum degree that our technological capabilities permit, to reduce the environmental footprint of our activities while preserving high-quality standards.

Water management

Water is an essential constituent in all of our products and we expend every effort on ensuring the most efficient use of it. By introducing new technological procedures that enable water recycling, coupled with investments into equipment modernisation to achieve higher levels of water consumption efficiency, and other methods, we have been able to reduce the volume of water consumed per litre of beverages produced. It is our intention to continue along this path.

We have implemented citified principles of EWS (European Water Stewardship) that focus on the preservation of water sources. We have also conducted an extensive study and risk analysis concerned with water resources relevant to our Prague-Kyje bottling plant and we have implemented measures to eliminate risks associated with operating activities taking place at our plant.

Energy management

Just as we strive to minimise our water consumption, we also look to reduce our energy demands. We are confident that through trialling new technologies with increased energy efficiency we will be able to continue reducing our energy consumption by several percentage points each year. For example, a new bottle washing technology has enabled us to reduce the energy consumption of the washing facility by 75 percent and water consumption by 45 percent. On top of that, the bottling plant obtains 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

Coca‑Cola HBC Česko a Slovensko has implemented an energy management system successfully certified in accordance with ISO 50001.

Waste management

We continuously strive to reduce the amount of waste produced while increasing the proportion of recyclable waste. We diligently sort not only waste materials from production or warehousing, but also our regular office waste. Our offices are provided with sorted waste bins and employees are educated to use the correct bin for each type of waste.

We manage to sort and reuse more than 90 percent of our solid waste in production plants.

Coca‑Cola in the Czech Republic not only enrolled in the country’s integrated system of waste collection, EKO-KOM, it even contributed to establishing it in the mid-1990s. Within the system, packaging material waste is considered an integral part of municipal waste, of which it forms about one-third. Colour-coded containers for different types of waste are now accessible to 99 percent of the country’s population while the distribution density of the containers is one of the most extensive in Europe. In Slovak Republic cooperates our company with organization ENVI-PAK and local deposit system for PET and cans.

Greenhouse gas emissions

We are acutely aware of the negative impacts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and we thus strive to do our best to contribute as little as possible to such emissions. We endeavour to minimise both the volume of waste produced and energy consumed.

Our cooling operations rely on technologies that are not only completely free of hydrofluorocarbon substances but also contribute as little as possible to greenhouse gas emissions. Our cooling medium of choice is carbon dioxide (CO2), a natural coolant as it is present throughout the environment where it constitutes a natural component of the biosphere. Carbon dioxide does not damage the ozone layer and has a low greenhouse effect.

Whenever investing in new technologies, we always make sure that the considered technology complies with current demands in terms of environmental impacts. We work hard to reduce our carbon footprint across all our processes as much as possible.

Raw materials

We keep a close eye on the consumption of raw and other materials throughout our bottling operations. We endeavour to achieve improvement in five key areas:

• Reduction and optimisation of packaging weight and volume
• Shipping palette optimisation
• Use of recyclable materials wherever technically possible
• Encouragement for consumers to dispose of packaging properly and sort waste after they consume our products
• Support for innovative packaging solutions in a “closed cycle” (recycling)

Efficient logistics

Almost our entire fleet is powered by alternative engines, which include CNG engines, fully electric cars or plug-in and mild hybrid cars. In a similar vein, the vast majority of our handling technology is electricity-powered in line with our environmental policy. All electricity supplied to the bottling plant comes from renewable sources.