Cola firm pours investment on the environment

Environmental sustainability is ingrained in Asiawide Refreshments Corporation’s (ARC) heritage. ARC is the licensed manufacturer and distributor of RC Cola in the Philippines.

The production of soft drink, after all, impacts the environment, affecting water, carbon emission and energy consumption. As such, ARC takes its role as a steward of the environment seriously and prides itself on its company-wide green initiatives, woven into the fabric of its business roadmap since it started. Eight years later, the cola firm’s proactive thrust has made them one of the most lauded in green living.

For its waste water treatment facility,  ARC has been a three-time recipient of the Blue Award from LLDA, a quasi-government agency that initiated an environmental rating system to industries and commercial establishments around the Laguna de Bay region. With careful measures and benchmarking its initiatives, the cola firm has raised the bar each year. For this, LLDA has elevated ARC’s Blue Award—which affirms that the company’s effluents are consistently within standards—to the Green Award.  The company has since won two consecutive Green Awards.

“We cannot deliver quality without being compliant,” Butch Aves, vice president for manufacturing and technical services for ARC, says. “It is essential to achieve that. One of the first considerations when we were building the plant (in Antipolo) was for it to comply with environmental standards.”

For Aves, who personally took charge of building the Antipolo plant, becoming sensitized to our fragile planet would not only minimize the environment impact with respect to waste management and energy awareness but also help engrain a health and safety culture among its employees.

“It is easier for us to work on environmental sustainability because it has been entrenched since our inception. We designed it that way. So from the very start, our employees were equipped with the essentials. They know that helping the environment will not only help them but their children’s future. In a way, it has become organic,” he adds. The concept works well because every ARC employee has been oriented about it as soon as they step into the company. Compliance with environmental standards, Aves says, is not limited to LLDA alone. The company also has to meet the environmental terms of the local government and DENR, among others.

Aves takes pride in ARC’s wastewater-treatment facility, whose waste water is so clean that the caretakers have created a fish pond beside it.  With a stringent effluent discharge limits, tilapia fish have taken shelter in it, proving that wastewater quality could not only be improved but be part of enhancing aquatic conditions along tributaries within the Laguna de Bay area.

For Aves, the solution includes creating a well-oiled, well-efficient plant that complies with government environmental standards.

Its production facility is constructed in a way that helps increase the efficient use of all resources, including waste reduction, energy consumption and air emission.

Lowering carbon emission is also part of ARC’s concept of sustainability which is why the company has ensured that its air standard is at par or even beyond the benchmark.

The company is continuously in search of green initiatives that will help reduce its carbon footprint and minimize the impact on the environment.  “We will continue to work efficiently and influence green building practices. The recognition that we receive for our efforts has inspired all of us at ARC to see the difference on how sustainability can help make a big difference to our environment for our future generation,” Aves says.