Beverage industry and sustainability: TATA beverages

We have previously wrote about how the beverage industry is getting more and more Sustainable, with more sustainable packaging like the Coca-Cola Company PlantBottle packaging, or by taking greater attention to the supply chain, as PepsiCo is doing with its recent committment to purchase only 100% Mexico sustainably grown sunflower crops.

 
Today, we will take a quick insight in what TATA Global Beverages is doing regarding sustainability. But first, a couple of information about the Company: TATA Global Beverages is part of the TATA Group, it currently employs 3,000 people around the world and it reported a 28% profit increase on Q3 2010, with profits being Rs 471.5 million (more than 74 million Euros).
 
If you take a look at Tata beverages website, it is clear that TATA Global Beverages is deeply involved in sustainability: from its mission “to make the world a better place through ‘life enhancing sustainable hydration’ to its long term goals and its collaborating with the Rainforest Alliance.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, TATA Global Beverages Director of Sustainibility Sara Howe, talked about the challenge to balance sustainability with the Company’s present short-term financial and commercial pressures.
She stated to be optimistic about the number of big companies who are now seriously and credibly engaging with the sustainability agenda, setting ambitious sustainability targets and demonstrating progress towards achieving them.
 ” As more companies come to understand the risks and opportunities that issues like climate change, water stress, population growth, health and wealth disparity, represent, then the necessary capacity and capability building will follow” Howe states.
But what is the role of consumers in the process towards a more sustainable business? Howe’s reply: “In a consumer-focused business like ours a particular challenge is getting permission from consumers to act for the future. Traditional research and insight methodologies tend to drive responses based on their current experience and understanding. We need to find a way of showing consumers what the future might look like from a sustainability point of view. Then they can then help us design products and services fit for that future” yet adding that her main concern about the ability to create a more sustainable world is that “That too many people won’t get it until it’s too late“.

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