Coca-Cola is funding several activities to improve water quality and quantity, including agroforestry training for women in Kenya.

Standard Digital reports that Coco-Cola has announced plans to improve water efficiency by 25 per cent by 2020 and treat all waste water from its manufacturing processes. Through supporting healthy watersheds and community water programmes, the company has pledged to ‘give back’ an equivalent of 18.5 billion litres of water it uses globally every year in its products and production process by 2020.

In Kenya this will involve providing KSh 12.75 million (about US $144,000) to the Nairobi Water Fund for projects that protect the Upper Tana water catchment. The majority of Nairobi’s water supply comes from this catchment area that also supplies water for Coca-Cola bottlers in the Mount Kenya region.

Among the Fund’s projects will be providing training for 10,000 women in agroforestry, the planting of 30,000 native trees and bamboo seedlings and introducing efficient irrigation technology on 300 smallholder farms. It is hoped 400 new jobs will be created in the process.

Read the full story: Coca-Cola to ‘give back’ 18.5b litres of water