Cold Drinks at the 2000 Olympics Still Warm the Planet
© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
June 28, 2000
SYDNEY, Australia, June 28, 2000 (ENS) - The Coca-Cola Company has not bowed to Greenpeace demands that it replace all its greenhouse gas emitting drinks coolers at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games with more environmentally friendly coolers. But the Olympics sponsor announced today that it will try to do better by the next summer Olympic games four years from now.
By the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, the company will no longer purchase new cold drink equipment using hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) where cost efficient alternatives are commercially available, Douglas Daft, chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, said today.
Daft, an Australian, took over the top spot at the Atlanta, Georgia based soft drinks company in February.
Hydrofluorocarbons have been used for refrigeration in place of ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) since CFCs were banned by international agreement. Because HFCs contain no chlorine, they will not contribute to stratospheric ozone depletion, but scientists warn that this class of compounds contributes to climate change.
Hydrofluorocarbons are one of the six categories of greenhouse gases linked with global warming that are governed by the Kyoto Protocol, an addition to the United Nations climate change treaty.
Between now and 2004, Daft said Coca-Cola will expand its research and development program to identify and field test "a variety of promising alternative refrigeration technologies."
Suppliers will be required to announce specific time schedules to use only HFC-free foam insulation and refrigeration in all new cold drink equipment by 2004.
"In concert with the international Kyoto Agreement on climate change, we are requiring our suppliers to develop, by the end of the decade, new equipment that is 40-50 percent more energy efficient than today’s equipment," Daft said.Greenpeace today congratulated Coca-Cola for adopting a new refrigeration policy to reduce its impact on global climate change.
"Greenpeace has been campaigning in its offices around the world to change Coca-Cola’s polluting HFCs," said Greenpeace Olympics campaigner Blair Palese.Now Greenpeace has set its sights on changing the practices of other Olympic Games sponsors. "If Coca-Cola can make this change, so too can the other Olympic sponsors such as McDonald’s," said Palese.Greenpeace has been asking Coca-Cola to abandon its corporate refrigeration policy of HFC use and abandon all CFC/HCFC/HFC use by the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics.
Coca-Cola has reached an agreement with one of the largest commercial refrigeration companies in the Southern Hemisphere to develop the capability to produce large single door, high performance commercial coolers using hydrocarbon refrigerants. These are flammable and create ground level ozone but have a negligible impact on global warming.
"Finalizing this agreement with Skope Industries, a key supplier in the South Pacific, will be a significant legacy of our involvement in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games," said Daft.
Since the 1997 Kyoto Agreement, the company has had a task force focusing on alternative refrigeration technologies and climate change issues. "We are moving forward as fast as the technology for the range of our equipment sizes and needs will allow," said Geoff Walsh, Coca-Cola South Pacific.
Since 1999, Coca-Cola together with the Danish Technical Institute, Danish Energy Agency and two Danish suppliers, Vestfrost and Danfoss, have been conducting trials on small single door coolers that reduce energy consumption.
"We are extending similar trials to Sydney 2000. For the first time in Australia, 100 drink coolers that use hydrocarbon refrigerant with negligible impact on global climate change will be installed at Sydney Olympic Park as part of the field trial of this new equipment," Walsh said.
Olympics officials are upbeat about the field trials for the new equipment. David Richmond, director general of the Olympic Co-ordination Authority, today welcomed Coca-Cola's announcement.
Coca-Cola, an Olympic Team Millennium Sponsor, will make a valuable contribution to reducing global warming and reflect the positive long term environmental benefits that have flowed from the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Richmond said.