SUSTAINABILITY A green responsibility
Since day one, environmentally friendly production and packaging has been a central focus of German beverage company fritz-kola. Mirco Wolf Wiegert, founder and CEO of fritz-kola, explains its current and future focus on sustainability. He also declares that the company feels responsible to take action regarding the further development of sustainable solutions within the beverage industry as a whole.
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here has been a substantial shift in the beverage industry towards sustainability. On the way to becoming purpose- driven organisations, every company needs to focus on the potential shared-value for society and the environment that is directly connected with their business activities. For us at fritz-kola, sustainability isn’t just a trend, it’s a commitment. This commitment characterises all of our actions: from filling to packaging, from advertising to ingredients, from political to social efforts. Fortunately, sustainability is becoming increasingly important – in society and among consumers as well. The ‘green’ expectation of brands and companies is rising and the topic is increasingly becoming a crucial factor when it comes to the decision to purchase. We welcome this fact as it helps us in our mission to achieve more sustainability.
“There has been a substantial shift in the beverage industry towards sustainability. On the way to becoming purpose- driven organisations, every company needs to focus on potential shared value for society and the environment that is directly connected with their business activities.”
Glass is key
Packaging – especially glass – is the key instrument for acting environmentally friendly in the beverage industry. Since the beginning, fritz-kola has used glass bottles and participates actively in
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the German deposit-refund system. Both our 0.33L and 0.5L bottles belong to shared glass-bottle pools, which offer easier logistics and thus a small carbon footprint – even though glass might be heavier than other packaging options like PET or cans. This can be offset by minimising transport distances through filling this pool of bottles at one of our five different bottling locations or by any other beverage brand in Europe. The glass bottles can be reused up to 50 times before getting 100% recycled. This minimises harm to the environment and makes it better than any other packaging. We constantly aim to find even more bottling plants to increase the density of our distribution system and strengthen our regional supply chains. Unlike PET or cans, glass also avoids joining the immense export of trash to other countries – a huge problem as trash is often not recycled there. We also love glass for keeping carbonated beverages fresher longer – as carbon dioxide does not escape through the material.
As green as possible
Keeping distances short is not the only thing saving valuable energy resources. We also aim to expand the use of renewable energy and increase efficiency in the entirety of our supply chain – from filling to transportation and even the electricity at our offices. To reach this goal, we are working with our partners at the bottling plants on making production as resource-friendly as possible. We agreed on using electricity from 100% renewable sources, a climate protection strategy and establishing an environmental management system to organise all these changes for more eco-efficiency by 2021. This will secure our route to constantly lower our emissions.
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