Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages CEO, Christina Ruggiero, cleans the Miramar beach in Goa to celebrate her marriage anniversary and #WorldEnvironmentDay

Panjim, June 4, 2018: Christina Ruggiero, CEO, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB) Pvt Ltd, celebrated her marriage anniversary and #WorldEnvironmentDay in a unique way. She with her husband (Herbert) and two children (Alexander and Parker) flew to Goa and teamed up with more than 70 associates from the Company to clean the Miramar beach. It was a morning well spent as local residents also joined the group and enthusiastically collected strewn glass, metal, paper, wire, plastic, spoilt fishing nets, rubber, shoes, soles etc. For an act that began at 7 am, the team had collected 30 KGs of waste in less than 60 minutes. The beach cleanup was ably supported by the Goa Waste Management Corporation.

Articulating the idea of cleaning a beach, to celebrate one’s anniversary, Mrs. Christina Ruggiero, CEO, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd., said, “My kids were the original founders of the idea of doing the beach clean up in the first place. So it made all the sense in the world to do the beach clean up as a part of our anniversary celebrations. It was an immensely fulfilling act and all of us walked away feeling fantastic and energized"?.

Several top executives of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages were present at the clean up drive including Shukla Wassan, Executive Director – Legal and Corporate Affairs, Kamlesh Sharma, Chief Communications Officer, Rajneet Kohli, Zonal Vice President and Umesh Malik, Vice President, Public Affairs.

Christina Ruggiero is currently the only woman CEO of a top 5 FMCG company in India. She took the reins at HCCB in June 2017 and relocated to Bengaluru – the headquarters of HCCB - from Atlanta. She has lived and worked in 55 countries and counts Goa among one of her favourite places in India. She recently, jointly launched a program to recycle plastic waste in Goa with Mr. Francis D’Souza, Minister for Urban Development. An estimated 4-5 tonnes of plastic is likely to be collected every day through this plastic waste recycling project. The collected plastic will be converted into useful products like T-shirts, fabric, backpacks, etc. and the hard to recycle low-end plastics like carry bags, laminates etc. shall be used to manufacture compressed boards, co- incineration in cement kilns, road laying and pyrolysis.