[Quest:] Coca-Cola. Welcome back. The Chief Executive of Coca-Cola says he wants all his packaging back. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just there's far too much of it being dumped. Coke says it's pushing for a waste-free world. James Quincey told me it's become a major priority in a market that's become increasingly volatile.
[James Quincey, Chief Executive Officer, The Coca-cola Company:] I'm hearing a lot of noise on all fronts actually. I think there's more uncertainty and more volatility, there's been for a number of years. It's not like we're facing a new headwind, there's less tailwind perhaps, but there's not a new massive recession
[Quest:] In the in the slowdowns, one has always thought of Cola as being recession proof. In the sense you're one of those barometers like biscuits in a recession. People always buy it. In that sense, when you look at your sales numbers, do you see a slight dip or do you are they holding on?
[Quincey:] When macro economy is when the economies slow down, we tend to see a slight slowdown
[Quest:] Yes
[Quincey:] But it's not a big swing
[Quest:] Right
[Quincey:] Like durable goods is. So you know, in the end, we go look, we're going to go through the cycle, they'll focus on what we can control and the things we can do and we'll manage through the ups and downs.
[Quest:] You've been trying to get rid of waste for ages. So what's new?
[Quincey:] What's new? Well, this time last year, we set ourselves a very clear ambition. We wanted to you know, we've made progress, we were up well over half of collecting all our bottles back. We set ourselves a target, we want to get all the packages back, 100 percent to the packages by 2030, and we want to use half of them again in our own bottles.
[Quest:] OK, but is this an individual thing or is a philosophical? In other words, when I throw away my bottle of coke zero, plastic or glass or plastic, and I throw it away in my into the recycling bin, and it goes off into the building. You don't physically get that bottle back.
[Quincey:] Yes, I do. It depends on the country, but yes, I do. I buy back huge bales of those bottles, and then I take them to one of my facilities, I basically chop them up, melt them and make new food grade bottles again. So the it's all about creating value for the bottle. We then create a circular economy. You don't have to give it back to me, but if you put it in the recycling bin, eventually, one of those waste management companies will put them all together and sell them to me, and I'll use them. It absolutely can be solved. And I think there's a lot of energy around bringing governments, retailers and manufacturers together to get it done.
[Quest:] So what's your next target? So when we speak next year on this subject, what will you be hoping to tell me?
[Quincey:] I am not even hoping, I am absolutely going to come and tell you we made progress. Because if we don't make progress every year, we're not going to achieve our goal. And we've got a lot of projects with governments around up and running with our peer manufacturers to really make progress this year.
[Quest:] All right, the other area where of course one has to make progress, and I know you have strategies, is the amount of sugar.
[Quincey:] Yes.
[Quest:] It is simply extraordinary the amount of sugar in both in a full throttle of beverage of yours or your competitors?
[Quincey:] Well, I mean, some people, you know, they're very active, they have a coke and it's part of a diet that's fine. But in the end, we're absolutely committed to helping people manage or moderate or reduce their sugar consumptions. So we've invested a lot in R and D, we've invested a lot in innovation, Coke Zero, sugar tastes even better. You just threw away your Coke Zero Sugar bottle, there's no calories in that. And those are growing, Coke Zero had its fastest year of growth last year, diet coke in the U.S. started to turn around last year.
[Quest:] Why do you have both?
[Quincey:] We have both
[Quest:] I spent most of my life trying to work out.
[Quincey:] Well, Coke Zero tastes more closer to coke. We've had more time to perfect the formula of Coke Zero. Whereas Diet Coke was the original diet drink and it stayed as it was many years of
[Quest:] Are you going to get rid of it?
[Quincey:] No.
[Quest:] You going to get rid of it?
[Quincey:] No.
[Quest:] I think you will.
[Quincey:] No, I think I would have to go at the same time that I got rid of Diet Coke
[Quest:] Careful. Choose your color, sir.
[Quincey:] I think there's only one color I can choose
[Quest:] And yes, go on oh.
[Quincey:] Red for Coca-Cola.
[Quest:] Yes
[Quincey:] I could have gone with Coke Zero with some black, but then I'll leave that for you.
[Quest:] No, but I thought you might go for green for, you know, renewable or blue for blue skies.
[Ok -- Quincey:] Or oceans.
[Quest:] Or oceans, yes, but you were OK, what are you going to do?
[Quincey:] Look, you know what? I'm tempted to just put a circle around the whole thing.
[Quest:] Feel free.
[Quincey:] But I'm actually
[Quest:] Feel free
[Quincey:] Going to write in here.
[Quest:] Twenty first century social compact. What do you mean by that?
[Quincey:] I think that all of those issues speak to some fracturing of the 20th century social compact which created an explosive emergence of the middle class in U.S., in Europe, in China and lots of other places in the world. And what drove and created that is being broken off in pieces. All of those all of those other points represent a fracture line in the model from the 20th century, and we need to recreate something that people can believe in.
[Quest:] Is it OK, is it possible?
[Quincey:] It's not going to be easy. It has to be doable. It has to be done. It is possible, but I think it will take time, it will layer in pieces that can be solved in the short term and it will have to bring pieces to the long term.
[Quest:] And do you see part of your role and responsibilities as CEO to engage on that?
[Quincey:] Absolutely.
[Quest:] CEO of Coca-Cola. I have no idea whether Sydney Snowbot prefers a coke, a Diet Coke or a Coke Zero, but I do know why we decided this year to have a snowbot. It's all about how many jobs will be taken over in the fourth industrial revolution. Will Sydney take my job? We'll be talking to the Guy Ryder of the ILO about this industrial revolution and the workers who will lose out.