The world’s largest food and beverage manufacturers must do more to increase access to nutritious products and positively exercise their influence on consumer choice and behavior, says the first edition of the global Access to Nutrition Index (ATNI) report and rankings.

This report aims to provide a macro level overview of water-related risks to and from Indian businesses, their response mechanisms and the opportunity for businesses to embark on a water stewardship journey.

In this report, Oxfam assesses the social and environmental policies of the world’s ten largest food and beverage companies and calls on them to take the critical next steps to create a just food system.

Coca-Cola became one of the world's most powerful brands by equating its soft drinks with happiness. Now, for the first time, it's addressing a growing cloud over the industry: obesity. The US-based company on Monday will begin airing a twominute ad during the highestrated shows on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC in hopes of becoming a stronger voice in the debate over sodas and their impact on public health. The ad lays out Coca-Cola's record of providing drinks with fewer calories over the years and notes that weight gain is the result of consuming too many calories of any kind — not just soda.

In a prescription to tackle the drought situation in Maharashtra, state Agriculture Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil has urged Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to stop water supply to the real estate sector and other water-intensive industries such as soft drink units, until the situation improves.

Vikhe-Patil said, “The first priority should be water for drinking, the second for agriculture and the third for industries.” In the last one week, almost 50 MLAs across parties had urged the CM to take immediate steps to restrict use of water in industries. Even some NCP MLAs had asked Water Resources Minister Sunil Tatkare to prevent industrial units in their districts from drawing backwaters from dams.

This paper surveys a broad range of activities at the frontiers of private sector engagement on water predominantly, though not exclusively, driven by MNCs in the food and beverage sector.

PANJIM: The International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa is going to see zero tolerance to plastic waste with Panjim civic authorities chalking out a plan of action to reduce and re-cycle every bit of waste generated during the ten-day festivities.
This eco-friendly initiative, for the first time by the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP), aims at reducing non-biodegradable waste by 50 per cent and plastic waste by 100 per cent.

The CCP Commissioner Sanjit Rodrigues on Sunday said, “We are not going to allow any use of bags, bottles, drinking cups or glasses, plates of plastic or material that is non-biodegradable generally dispensed by vendors at the IFFI venues.”

Complaints of overexploitation of groundwater

The Assembly Committee on Environment, which visited the bottling plant of PepsiCo at Kanjikode on Tuesday, directed the Groundwater Department to monitor and restrict strictly the use of groundwater by the company. The committee, on complaints from various organisations that the soft-drink giant was overexploiting groundwater, asked the department to examine if the company was tapping groundwater in excess of the permitted quantity. The complaints said the overexploitation was lowering the water table, affecting the drinking water sources of the local people.

Beverage major Coca-Cola has extended its partnership with UNHabitat on water sustainability to 10 countries from five at the sixth World Urban Forum.

Coca-Cola has joined a national recycling label packaging scheme in a bid to educate consumers about the recyclability of its plastic bottles.

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