Are Coca‑Cola's fridges and vending machines climate-friendly?

Increasingly so, and we're currently working to minimise the environmental impact of this equipment in a number of ways:

Coca-Cola has developed and licensed an 'Energy Management Device' for our coolers. The 'smart' device works out when it needs to be at full power, and when it can enter 'sleep mode'. It then manages its power consumption to suit these patterns - e.g. having the drinks cold and the lights on during office hours in a company canteen and powering down at night and weekends. This technology can reduce energy consumption by up to 35 per cent per cooler.

We are currently retrofitting glass doors onto open-fronted coolers. This results in a reduction in energy usage of around 50%.

We have programmes in place to dispose of refrigeration equipment responsibly. This prevents refrigerant gases such as HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) - which are potent greenhouse gases - from escaping into the atmosphere.

We only purchase refrigeration equipment with HFC-free insulation. We're also making progress toward our goal to purchase 100 per cent HFC-free coolers by January 2013.

We've been replacing standard fluorescent lighting on our coolers and vending machines with long-life LED lighting, which is up to 80% more efficient compared to fluorescent lighting.

We've been working hard to bring about global changes in refrigeration technology and find alternative, HFC-free refrigeration equipment and have thus formed the Refrigerants Naturally partnership - together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Greenpeace and McDonald's. We are working to encourage the refrigeration industry and our peer companies to help us do more in years to come.