Environmental care

At FEMSA, we are committed to caring for the environment, which is why we seek to incorporate sustainable development criteria into all of our business decisions and processes. Our efforts focus on issues like the availability of drinking water to our communities, reforestation, and bodies of water cleanup; appropriate management and recycling of waste; environmentally-friendly processes and packaging, and optimization of energy consumption in our operations and value chain. 

The principles upon which our policy is based include the following:

• Innovation in our operations through environmentally friendly technologies.
• Continuous training of associates in techniques designed to protect the environment.
• Active encouragement of environmental leadership among our associates.
• Constant awareness of opportunities to reduce our environmental impacts and use of natural resources through efficiency, innovation, and performance monitoring.

Listed below are a few of the actions we have taken to reduce our environmental impacts and work toward more sustainable operation:

Water use

• Our efforts to conserve water in our operations have resulted in a savings, over the past five years, of 10.6 million cubic meters of water-enough to supply 38,000 households annually.
• Coca-Cola FEMSA is a global leader in water usage efficiency. In 2009, the company saved 630,000 cubic meters of water compared to its 2008 consumption, equivalent to the annual consumption of 2,000 families.
• Our 51 wastewater treatment plants in 9 countries, 20 of which are located in Mexico, contribute for the more efficient use of water at FEMSA's facilities.
• We have developed in 2008, the first great action introduced by the FEMSA Foundation in conjunction with Tecnológico de Monterrey and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB): The Water Center for Latin America and the Caribbean (CAALCA). This Center fosters to solve the major water problems that people of this region undergo.
   

Energy use

• In 2004, we invested nearly Ps.23 million in energy savings programs, which over the past five years have saved 140 million kilowatt-hours of electricity-equivalent to the annual electricity use of 108,000 households per year.
• We have reduced the consume of gas in our beverage operations in 9% annually per unit produced.
• In 2008, after two years of investigations, the Insumos Estratégicos area developed the Neviz refrigerator, which nowadays is the world's friendliest cooler with the environment. Its electric energy consume is comparable to a 25 watts light bulb, besides it uses an inert cooling gas that is totally recyclable when its useful time is over.
• OXXO has shown interest in contributing to the environment by introducing a system called Intelligent OXXO Store, which controls lighting, refrigeration, and air conditioning equipment in its stores in real time through a central processing unit. At the close of 2009, 56.7% of OXXO stores had this system.
• We use compact vehicles that run on electricity rather than gasoline in high-traffic areas such as downtown Mexico City.

Recycling

• Together with ALPLA, a plastics packaging company, and Coca-Cola de Mexico, we invested US$20 million in the construction of the IMER food-grade, bottle-for-bottle, PET recycling plant.
• In 2009,IMER increased its production by 30%, recycling 16,000 metric tons of containers. With bottle to bottle recycling technology, IMER produced close to 10,000 metric tons of recycled food-grade resin, which was used to produce 1.4 billion new 600 ml bottles with 35% of recycled material.
• In the last two years we have recycled mores than 12,000 tons of aluminum equivalent to 901 million of aluminum cans.
• We made savings for 22.1 million of hour-kilowatts of electricity through the recycling of 64,000 tons of glass in the last two years.
• In our strategic business units we all contribute to the confinement of batteries; organic, inorganic and recyclable trash separation; promoting other ecological actions among our employees, their families and the visitors we have in our facilities.
• Through Súmate, vive nuestra cultura (Add Yourself Up, Live our Culture), a program of environmental awareness and savings, which was born at the initiative of the employees of FEMSA’s corporate offices in Monterrey, Mexico, were saved in 2009, 32 metric tons of aluminum, cardboard, and newspapers were recycled.

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