Last week, Coca-Cola announced that the company is near to completing a huge lighting retrofit project in its California facilities as a means to reduce energy. Once finished, the project is expected reduce to energy consumption for lighting by 5.6 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year–and potentially 113 million kWh over the next  20.

“At Coca-cola Enterprises, corporate responsibility and sustainability is where the world touches our business and where our business touches the world,” said Terry Finch, general manager and vice president of Coke’s West Business Unit.

Coke’s latest sustainability report, released last year, highlights the company’s ambitious objectives, which include reducing water use at its manufacturing plants by 10% by 2010; reducing packaging material by 100,000 metric tons by 2010; and reducing emissions 5% from 2004 levels by 2015.

The Coca-Cola Company is a model not just for its sustainability initiatives, but also for its reporting methods. Coke’s sustainability website is an online, interactive medium through which consumers and other stakeholders are actively engaged via an “addressing your questions” section and a monthly email newsletter, among other applications.

By Dan Giacomini, at The Element Agency in New York.