Drinks giant is the only Fortune 500 company to return as much water to nature and local communities as it uses for its products The world's biggest soft drinks maker Coca-Cola has announced it now replenishes all the water it uses in its products around the world, five years ahead of target. The achievement now means that Coca-Cola returns the same volume of water back to communities and nature as it uses in its drinks ranges every year, including the water used in its manufacturing processes. It does not include the water needed to grow agricultural ingredients used in Coca-Cola's drinks. To verify its efforts, Coca-Cola said it uses a global water use assessment validated by water use specialists LimnoTech and consultancy Deloitte. It found that last year Coca-Cola returned around 191.9bn litres of water - the equivalent of 115 per cent of the water used in last year's drinks. "This achievement marks a moment of pride for Coca-Cola and our partners," said Muhtar Kent, chief executive of The Coca-Cola Company. "Now, every time a consumer drinks a Coca-Cola product, they can have confidence that our company and bottling partners are committed to responsible water use today and tomorrow. We are keenly aware that our water stewardship work is unfinished and remain focused on exploring next steps to advance our water programmes and performance." The water is replenished via 248 community partnership projects, which focus on protecting water sources and providing safe water access for communities. "Some replenish projects directly return water to the source we use while others are outside the watershed our plant uses but are important to help meet needs of local governments, communities and partners where there is a pressing need," Coca-Cola said in a statement.