Water Use Reporting At Coca-Cola

The Verge, one of the online platforms of Vox Media, published an investigative story last week about the sustainability accounting practices of Coca-Cola. It raised a number of questions about the manner in which the firm reports on its water use in the production of its signature product.

For instance, the article noted that:

Coca-Cola claims that for every drop the company uses, it gives one back. But “every drop” includes only what goes into the bottle. The company does not count water in its supply chain — including the water-guzzling sugar crop — in its “every drop” math.

During the first two weeks of June, we are utilizing our Save The Blue Frog web site and case to support an intensive accounting course at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. It is the capstone course for the graduate accounting program, entitled Strategic Management in a Global Business Environment.

Thus, for our course, the investigative story provides a well-timed example of the need to utilize standard industry metrics for the reporting of environmental, economic, and social outcomes. The capstone course is emphasizing the standards, frameworks, and metrics of the Global Reporting Initiative, the International Integrated Reporting Council, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, and the United Nations in its curriculum.

Many thanks to Barbara Sullivan-Watts, a Special Lecturer at Providence College who is teaching Environmental Biology at the institution, for bringing the Coca-Cola article to our attention.