Business for Social Good
Eva is Senior Sustainability Manager at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners for the Netherlands, and leads the company’s sustainability strategy in the country. Coca-Cola Europacific Partners maintains strong local roots in the Netherlands, utilising local resources and operating a local factory, which has allowed Eva to pursue an active strategy of sustainability and giving back to local communities. The company’s sustainability strategy in the Netherlands ranges from reducing carbon emissions by transitioning the factory from gas to electricity, converting transport trucks away from fossil fuels to biofuels, and phasing out fossil fuels from packaging.
Eva attended the One Young World Summit in Munich virtually in 2021. She found the Summit to be deeply inspiring, as someone who was already extremely familiar and passionate about sustainability. The Summit nonetheless showed her the human side of social impact, and since then she has become more involved with Coca-Cola’s established community partners in the Netherlands and has strived to foster new partnerships for local impact. She and her team are working with A Beautiful Mess, a restaurant-concept by NPO The Refugee Company, that gives employment opportunities to refugees and asylum seekers, by sponsoring their barista training programme. Eva believes the biggest impact can be made if as many people as possible join the impact movement. She had therefore introduced sustainability training for senior leaders within her company.
“For me, the Summit really opened up more the human side of impact, which I was really struck by and which has really inspired me. So actually since then, I've become way more involved locally in our community partner program. It really motivated me to look for new partners around refugees here in the Netherlands and make more of an impact with them, which we actually have been able to do since.”
In line with the company’s target to be net zero by 2040, Eva has led the Water Sustainability pillar for the Netherlands. Coca-Cola Europacific Partners aims to reduce the amount of water being used through water efficiency technologies, but also to compensate for the company’s sites water usage by replenishing water used in Coca-Cola’s production processes by 2030. To do this, they have partnered with Natuurmonumenten, a local NGO restoring the environment. Through partial financing across two years, Eva and her team have replenished the Liskes with 85 million litres of water per year, and the Pastoorswijer with 57 million litres of water per year. A third project is currently underway that should replenish 135 million litres.
The replenishment of these areas with water has in turn led to an increase in biodiversity in the area. These projects are utilising land that was traditionally reserved for water storage but which had been nonfunctional prior to the replenishment. Eva is actively involved throughout the process, and an external auditor assesses the amount of water that has been restored. The company and Eva are also looking into projects to increase biodiversity with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners’ sugar beet suppliers and to reduce the carbon footprint of sugar beet cultivation.