Coca-Cola undertaking Africa project

NEW YORK – Coca-Cola Co.said on Wednesday it would help to bring clean drinking water to parts of Africa in a plan to work with local communities on environmental issues like water management.

“We’re focusing on water because we’re a hydration company,” Neville Isdell, chief executive of the world’s largest beverage company, said at a Business for Social Responsibility conference here. “We’re focusing on water because it’s the main ingredient in every product we make …the success of our business depends on the availability of local water resources.”Isdell said Coke was working with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to install pumps and extend municipal water taps into outlying communities in Mali.He said Coke had partnered with women’s groups there to set up a water fee program to extend and maintain the system.Working with CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere) and Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund), Coke has launched water access, safety and storage programmes in schools in Nyanza province and Nairobi in Kenya, said Isdell, whose family moved to Zambia in southern Africa from Northern Ireland when he was 10 years old.Coke is also supporting a project with Usaid to rehabilitate gravity-fed water systems and build new systems to improve access to drinkable water in Malawi, said Isdell, who was educated in Cape Town, South Africa and started working for Coca-Cola in 1966 with a local bottler in Kitwe, Zambia.Isdell said Coke wanted to work with local communities in part because of its experience in India, where environmental activists have accused Coca-Cola of depleting groundwater and selling contaminated beverages.Nampa-Reuters”We’re focusing on water because it’s the main ingredient in every product we make …the success of our business depends on the availability of local water resources.”Isdell said Coke was working with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to install pumps and extend municipal water taps into outlying communities in Mali.He said Coke had partnered with women’s groups there to set up a water fee program to extend and maintain the system.Working with CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere) and Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund), Coke has launched water access, safety and storage programmes in schools in Nyanza province and Nairobi in Kenya, said Isdell, whose family moved to Zambia in southern Africa from Northern Ireland when he was 10 years old.Coke is also supporting a project with Usaid to rehabilitate gravity-fed water systems and build new systems to improve access to drinkable water in Malawi, said Isdell, who was educated in Cape Town, South Africa and started working for Coca-Cola in 1966 with a local bottler in Kitwe, Zambia.Isdell said Coke wanted to work with local communities in part because of its experience in India, where environmental activists have accused Coca-Cola of depleting groundwater and selling contaminated beverages.Nampa-Reuters