Water

We work hard to protect the natural resources where we operate, including minimizing our water footprint and improving public access to clean water through alliances with nonprofit groups.

Enabling Access to Safe Water

Since 2005, PepsiCo Foundation has committed more than $15 million to initiatives that provide access to safe water and sanitation to communities in developing countries.

In 2011, PepsiCo Foundation will reach its goal of providing access to safe water and sanitation to one million people. It expects to achieve this goal through the support of such partners as Water.org, Safe Water Network, The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), China Women's Development Foundation (CWDF) and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. These projects are helping install village water and irrigation systems, establish water health centers, construct over 1,000 rainwater harvesting cisterns, improve sanitation programs and recharge aquifers in developing communities, particularly in Ghana, Kenya, Brazil, China and India.

Since 2001, PepsiCo Foundation and PepsiCo China have contributed $2.5 million to bring access to safe water to 56,000 people in western rural areas of China. In Asia, we have also launched a pilot program, WaterHope, which uses innovative microfinance and business models to partner with the communities to develop safe, sustainable water supplies. So far, four franchise water stations have been launched in poor urban areas of Manila, Philippines, developed in partnership with local NGOs with expertise on microfinance and micro-enterprise development.

Learn more about PepsiCo Foundation's partners and programs.

CEO Water Mandate

PepsiCo chairman and CEO, Indra Nooyi, publicly demonstrated PepsiCo's commitment to helping address the global water crisis by joining other partners as a signatory to the United Nations CEO Water Mandate. By signing the CEO Water Mandate, PepsiCo has committed to adhering to a holistic approach to water management in six areas: direct operations, supply chain and watershed management, collective action, public policy, community engagement and transparency.

Download our CEO Water Mandate Communication on Progress (PDF, 115KB)

Respecting the Human Right to Water

Our search for a clean and ample water supply has an impact on each community in which we operate, as well as on our business operations. We are committed to supporting governments that preserve the human right to water for individuals in the communities where our company operates, and to advocate this right more broadly.

In 2009, PepsiCo became one of the first companies of our size to publish public guidelines in support of water as a fundamental human right, in the context of the United Nations/World Health Organization guidance. The United Nations defines the human right to water as all people's right to safe, sufficient, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use.

PepsiCo agrees to the following steps to ensure that our business engagement across the globe, first and foremost, respects the human right to water:

Safety

We will ensure our operations preserve the quality of the water resources in the communities in which we do business.

Sufficiency

Our operating objective is to ensure our use of water will not diminish the availability of community water resources to the individuals or the communities in the areas in which we operate.

Acceptability

We will involve communities in our plans to develop water resources and will assure transparency of any risks or challenges to the local governments and community members in an ongoing manner.

Physical Accessibility

We will assure our operations will not adversely impact physical accessibility of community members to community water resources and will address community concerns in a cooperative manner.

Affordability

We will appropriately advocate to applicable government bodies that safe water supplies should be available in a fair and equitable manner to members of the community. Such water should be safe and of consistent and adequate supply and affordable within local practices.

Climate Change

We are transparent in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with our direct operations and voluntarily complete the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) investor questionnaire. For more information about PepsiCo's participation, please see our submission on the CDP site. We also became a member of the Carbon Disclosure Project Supply Chain program to better understand climate change risks and opportunities across our supply chain. This program helps us assist our suppliers and growers in tracking their carbon emissions.

In the U.S., PepsiCo has participated with the EPA on programs to reduce energy consumption (ENERGY STAR) and emissions (Climate Leaders), and increase transportation efficiency (SmartWay). The EPA has awarded PepsiCo a 2011 ENERGY STAR "Sustained Excellence" Award in recognition of our continued leadership in protecting our environment through energy efficiency. We also significantly expanded our impact through our Environmental Supplier, an outreach program that has encouraged more than 150 PepsiCo suppliers to join the ENERGY STAR program since 2008 and focus on improving energy efficiency.

Globally, PepsiCo has engaged with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to write and develop new global standards for quantifying enterprise and product-level greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 2003, we have worked with the Carbon Trust, an independent, not-for-profit company set up by the U.K. government to help businesses address the growing threat of global climate change and to pioneer carbon footprinting methodology and standards.

PepsiCo has found working with external stakeholder groups on climate change extremely valuable. Organizations such as the Carbon Trust and Columbia University's Earth Institute provide a wealth of knowledge that we can learn from and then put into practice. In addition, PepsiCo has established a stakeholder engagement process through Ceres on sustainability issues. Dialogue with organizations such as Greenpeace on refrigerants and The Climate Group on recycling have proved beneficial to how the company engages in the communities in which it operates. Working with government on key energy-efficient goals—such as U.S. EPA on Climate Leaders, SmartWay and ENERGY STAR—also provides valuable interaction with government regulators.

PepsiCo participated in COP16 in order to engage with industry and global policymakers in support of global action on climate change. PepsiCo has endorsed the UN Caring for Climate initiative and the Copenhagen Communique. Working with national and local governments, the PepsiCo business units establish environmental and investment strategies for each region based on local needs.

As a U.S.-based company, PepsiCo is particularly involved with U.S. federal legislation. Some legislative issues with which we are engaged include: hybrid heavy-duty truck tax credits, electric vehicle/truck manufacturing tax credits, deployment of C0₂ as a refrigerant, industrial manufacturing efficiency tax credits, and water conservation in manufacturing.

As a direct consequence of our involvement with Refrigerants Naturally!, PepsiCo was involved in direct outreach activities with Greenpeace in Europe as well as the U.S. to advocate the use of natural refrigerants in cooling equipment and to limit any barriers that might hinder the introduction of these natural refrigerants.

PepsiCo is also one of the leading parties in the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER), which has developed and published sector-specific guidelines on environmental footprinting of products.

Land & Packaging

We work with a variety of partners to help minimize our impact on land.

PepsiCo is a supporter of sustainable forestry and a member of The Consumer Goods Forum (TCGF). As a member of TCGF, we are proud signatories of the Forum's resolutions on Deforestation and Sustainable Refrigeration released in November 2010.

In 2009, through Tropicana in the U.S. and Red Sky chips in the U.K., we introduced landmark sustainability initiatives jointly with our consumers and Cool Earth, a not-for-profit organization, to "rescue the rainforest." Working together, this initiative preserved more than 135 million square feet of threatened land.

PepsiCo also launched its Naked juice sustainable agriculture initiative by converting all Naked juice products made with bananas to 100 percent Rainforest Alliance–certified bananas.

To achieve our recycling goal, we will work with other U.S. industry leaders, retail customers and our bottlers to support programs and policies that effectively increase recycling. We will also help educate consumers and develop innovative programs to encourage recycling while partnering with our suppliers, communities and nongovernmental organizations to support efforts to encourage increased recycling efforts.

PepsiCo has been the longtime beverage sponsor of Keep America Beautiful's Great American Cleanup, the largest volunteer cleanup program in the nation, to ensure our containers are recycled.

As a result:

• 76 million pounds of litter and debris were removed from public lands and rights-of-way—including 71,000 acres of parks and public lands, 6,800 miles of rivers, lakes and shorelines, over 10,500 acres of wetlands, and 3,400 miles of hiking, biking and nature trails.
• 3,100 playgrounds and community recreation were cleaned, restored or constructed.
• 6,500 illegal dumpsites were remediated.
• More than 266 million plastic (PET) bottles were collected for recycling.
• There were 7.2 million pounds of electronics collected for recycling.
• Volunteers kept 15.3 million pounds of aluminum and steel out of landfills through their collection efforts.
• 1.1 million tires were collected for recycling, a 26 percent increase over 2009.
• 91.5 million pounds of newspaper were collected for recycling, an approximately 156 percent increase over 2009.
• In further support of PepsiCo's goal of increasing the U.S. beverage container recycling rate from 34 percent to 50 percent by 2018, PepsiCo and Waste Management, Inc. announced a multiyear partnership in support of the Dream Machine recycling initiative. Dream Machine kiosks are computerized receptacles that include a personal reward system that allows consumers to collect and redeem points for each bottle or can they recycle in the kiosk.

Education & Awareness

We are committed to promoting environmental education and best practices among our associates, business partners and consumers.

In Latin America, our beverage and snacks businesses have teamed together to promote the overall environmental awareness of our associates. To do this, they created an internal educational website, called pepsicoecofootprint.com, in multiple languages. Users of the site answer a short list of simple questions about their personal lifestyles, then the website tells them how many planet Earths would be required if everyone lived the same way.

Our Latin America Beverages business also partnered with Young Americas Business Trust to launch the PepsiCo Eco-Challenge, a regional competition for youth entrepreneurs that focuses on innovation for water conservation. The objective was to create awareness about environmental issues and invite young audiences to join us in our environmental sustainability efforts.

In the U.K., our Walkers Environmental Sustainability Leadership Team developed an awareness-building tool that highlights the risks we face as a business if the environmental crises go unchecked. This tool has been applied to all levels of U.K. associates, from plant floor workers to the senior management team.

In 2009, we developed a brochure for Sustainable Agriculture that is specifically geared to our growers and shares case studies of successful agricultural practices for each of the planks of our Sustainable Agriculture Policy. In 2010, the brochure was broadly distributed among our agricultural supplier base.Sustainable Agriculture Policy

We share environmental sustainability with all of our associates through special activities to mark events such as Earth Day and World Water Week. Environmental information is also included in our daily e-newsletter. Our PepsiCo Americas Beverages businesses have quarterly associate e-newsletters dedicated to sharing environmental sustainability initiatives and projects in the region and to showcasing best practices.

Green Teams

Frito-Lay North America maintains a dedicated team of experts across our manufacturing facilities focused on reducing consumption of electricity, fuels and water. Through Green Teams, volunteer associates have been trained to improve their environmental awareness and to understand how they can do their jobs without adversely impacting the environment.

PepsiCo Green is an overarching environmental sustainability initiative to raise associate awareness and create actionable tactics to improve the business and each associate's personal environmental footprint. The initiative's focus is to raise awareness, inspire action and institutionalize sustainability improvement efforts across PepsiCo through such activities as garden development, farmer's markets and cleanup events, in coordination with Employee Resource Groups.

In 2009, PepsiCo Green in New York, Connecticut and Texas were joined to form PepsiCo Green U.S. In 2010, the Chicago and New York locations collaborated to form a global organization of associate-led voluntary green teams aligning on execution of events throughout the year and sharing best practices among locations. We now have PepsiCo Green Teams in all of our major regions where we have divisional offices, including the U.K., Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Egypt, Dubai, Latin America and Australia.

Pepsicorps

PepsiCo is also launching a pilot of pepsicorps, a one-month Performance with Purpose assignment designed to provide selected associates with on-the-ground global experience leveraging business skills to tackle a societal challenge. The first pepsicorps trip will leave for Ghana in mid-October 2011. For this trip, eight employees will be selected to work on a clean water initiative.