Arca Continental Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages (CCSWB), one of the nation’s largest bottlers of Coca-Cola products, is deeply committed to sustainability practices that benefit both the environment and the community. Currently, a remarkable seven out of every 10 bottles sold by CCSWB are recycled, but its ultimate goal is to keep every single one of them out of the waste stream. Big ambitions are typical of the Dallas-based company, which takes seriously its roles both as a corporate citizen and environmental steward.
“We have already met or exceeded a good number of our 2030 goals on water, climate and waste, so we are looking forward to set new goals and always challenge the organization to continue improving,” says CCSWB Director of Sustainability Abraham Tueme.
Since 2020, CCSWB has reduced its carbon emissions by 46 million pounds, collected over 202 million pounds of plastic for recycling and reduced by 13% the energy required to manufacture its products. It buys 100% renewable energy across all Texas-based deregulated locations — the first long-term energy contract of this size among North American Coca-Cola bottlers.
Many of these efforts were inspired by The Coca-Cola Co.’s World Without Waste initiative, introduced in 2018 to help solve the global plastic waste crisis.
The company also promotes sustainability in communities throughout Texas by providing recycling opportunities and educating the public. During the 2023 NCAA Final Four, CCSWB had a presence at both the men’s and women’s tournaments in Houston and Dallas. In Dallas, the CCSWB team set up special SmartSort containers throughout the American Airlines Center to expand their recyclables capacity around the stadium, while supplementary recycling bins were placed at NRG Stadium in Houston. Plus, CCSWB increased awareness among tournament attendees with a sustainability education center at the Final Four fan festival.
“Partnering with Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages to bring SmartSort Technologies to American Airlines Center has provided a substantial step towards meeting our sustainability goals,” says Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of American Airlines Center Dave Brown.
Additionally, CCSWB keeps accelerating the collection of recyclable bottles at American Airlines Center. It installed nine more SmartSort bins at the arena last year, bringing the total to 21. Powered by artificial intelligence, the machines use cameras to identify what people are holding in their hands and indicate where to deposit them. “As the first arena to implement this technology, our goal is to lessen the arena’s carbon footprint for a better, greener future,” says Brown.
“We’ve been able to significantly reduce the contamination rate to practically nonexistent, which helps a lot with the operations aspect,” Tueme points out. “We hope to continue working with American Airlines Center on their vision to add a compost stream.”
CCSWB even experimented with different ads to determine which was most successful at boosting public cooperation with the program. The winner was an animation that shows a bottle being crushed and emerging as a new bottle.
At the annual Sips & Sounds Summer Festival launched last year in Austin, CCSWB brought sustainability to the community by rewarding concertgoers who traded in their plastic bottles with tickets that could be exchanged for festival merchandise, such as sunglasses, backpacks and bandanas. The event was such a success that CCSWB not only plans to do it again at Sips & Sounds 2024, but it also extended its efforts to support Fiesta San Antonio.
Internally, CCSWB prioritizes sustainability education and engagement through initiatives like Sustainability Week. “The focus is to raise awareness within our organization of the role that everybody gets to play in building a sustainable future,” Tueme explains. “We have webinars and training and partner with Keep Texas Beautiful to do cleanups around the state.”
In regards to sustainable packaging, CCSWB has made huge strides. In 2021, the company became the first Coca-Cola bottler in the U.S. to use an average of 50% recycled PET (rPET) plastic in its bottles, a goal achieved nine years ahead of its initial goal of 2030. PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is a type of plastic that is entirely recyclable and requires less energy to produce, thus cutting greenhouse emissions as well as waste. As part of CCSWB’s recycled PET plastic usage, all of CCSWB’s 13.2- and 20-ounce bottles of Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero and DASANI water are made entirely of recycled PET content.
“We are taking it one step further and doing the same for secondary packaging,” Tueme says, referring to using recycled content for the flexible plastic that wraps around larger cases of Coca-Cola products. “It’s not the same color as virgin plastic. It might look a little different, so we are letting people know that this is recycled content and we are not creating more waste.”
Water conservation is another of CCSWB’s goals; since last year it has been returning twice as much water as it uses back to the environment. The company’s community partnerships have been a significant support in achieving its water conservation goals. CCSWB collaborates with the Nature Conservancy, BEF, Ducks Unlimited and other agencies on a variety of community projects, including building levees to prevent flooding and divert this precious resource back into the Trinity River.
Additionally, the company is one of many Coca-Cola bottlers that distributes empty ingredient barrels for use to collect rainwater, with its largest partner being the Galveston Bay Foundation, where it has donated more than 3,000 barrels since 2013 with the capacity to capture more than 3.4 million gallons of water every year.
CCSWB regularly collaborates with nonprofits on all its sustainability projects, particularly chapters of Keep America Beautiful/Keep Texas Beautiful. For instance, it worked with the City of McAllen and Keep McAllen Beautiful to collect more than 24 million plastic bottles — a case study that was shared nationally as an example to other partners of Keep America Beautiful. In addition, CCSWB has planted trees across Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and the Travis County Watershed.
“We don’t just talk the talk,” Tueme says. “Sustainability is something that extends from operations through community involvement. It’s truly all-encompassing and Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages just shines in all of those areas. It’s hard work, but it’s very rewarding.”