Approach

Our Global EHS function strives to achieve a ‘Beyond Zero — Pursue Positive’ vision which, supported by our EHS strategy, aims to realize an incident-free workplace and promote a culture of positive impacts on the health and well-being of our employees, the environment and the communities in which we operate. Our EHS strategy is defined and supported by the Global EHS function, with segment EHS teams tasked with executing the strategy to reduce risk and drive continuous improvements.

Our ‘Beyond Zero — Pursue Positive’ vision guides the EHS teams as they work to reduce environmental incidents and occupational injuries and illnesses and enhance safe driving, while making, moving and selling our iconic products. The vision is formalized through our EHS Policy, which sets out our focus on environmental protection, safe driving and occupational health and safety for all people. 

Our robust Global Environment Health & Safety Management System (GEHSMS) is at the core of our EHS risk management strategy. GEHSMS is a cohesive and enterprise-wide set of management and technical standards for key EHS risks across our business. The GEHSMS structure is designed to fully align with international standards for environmental management systems and occupational health and safety management systems (ISO 14001 and ISO 45001), as well as to support compliance with regulations in the areas in which we operate. GEHSMS is intended to help assure that our operations are:

• Identifying opportunities to improve EHS performance;
• Managing and mitigating operational EHS risks and impacts;
• Complying with applicable EHS regulations where we do business; and 
• Planning for continuous EHS performance improvement.  
  
  

Our primary focus is maintaining high standards for EHS management and performance. All PepsiCo-owned operations are required to comply with GEHSMS, and in addition, many of our facilities maintain ISO 14001 and 45001 certification. Though these ISO standards are parallel to our own GEHSMS, pursuing dual certification can support alignment with regulation and stakeholder expectations in certain jurisdictions. Our Group ISO certification is validated annually by third-party auditors, and we continue to benchmark our performance against peer companies to help ensure we are consistently executing world-class EHS processes and risk mitigation strategies. We recognize that ISO certification does not benefit all facilities equally. Therefore, in certain areas where we operate, including the United States, some of our facilities do not pursue ISO certification because compliance with internal EHS standards, including GEHSMS, and regional regulations sufficiently assure EHS performance.



We also manage compliance with current and emerging legislation by performing applicability assessments of regulations covering worker safety, fleet management and environmental protection. This helps us meet stakeholder expectations and is a core requirement of the PepsiCo EHS Policy and a fundamental element of our GEHSMS system.

GEHSMS governance

We have a robust GEHSMS audit process, which includes self-assessments, internal audits and external audits to assess the strength and governance of our EHS performance. The governance of GEHSMS and the audit program aims to validate:  

• GEHSMS is operating as a functional system that drives continuous improvement;
• The integration of GEHSMS into business processes;
• Sites in the multi-site certification are conforming to the applicable international standards; and
• Compliance with EHS regulatory requirements and minimum global standards.

Safety for all our employees — our EHS culture

We strive to build a proactive EHS culture by driving ownership of environment, health and safety performance at the individual, managerial and organizational levels. We engage, collaborate with and train employees and actively encourage participation in building our proactive EHS culture — which we call “Courage to Care.” To do so, we have several policies, procedures and risk control methodologies designed to protect employees in our operations. We also ensure EHS materials are available in a variety of languages to meet the needs of our dynamic workforce. 

Health and safety management

To help protect our employees from occupational injuries and illnesses, we identify high risk activities, including the examples below, and invest in a wide range of engineering, technological and behavioral solutions.

Improving on-the-road safety

Moving our products requires significant delivery infrastructure. Protecting those on the road within the communities in which we operate is paramount. Our approach to on-the-road safety leverages a combination of focus areas, which include driver skill, route optimization and vehicle maintenance and safety. We train our drivers to help build their capability relating to safe and defensive driving techniques, in addition to leveraging fleet safety telematics, with an aim to reduce road traffic incidents. We evaluate and assess routes to look for potential risks that can be mitigated or avoided. PepsiCo is investing in cutting edge vehicle safety technologies that both aid and protect drivers against the potential for collision. 

PepsiCo continues to collaborate with industry leading multi-national corporations to align private sector efforts with the United Nations’ Decade of Action for Road Safety to improve road safety through our membership with Together for Safer Roads Coalition. 

Operational safety

For machine safety, we use virtual design reviews and augmented reality to conduct technical risk assessments and invest in risk controls with the aim of enhancing physical and safety awareness measures. We have also invested in ergonomic risk control technologies to promote safe handling of product and improve posture behaviors to help reduce ergonomic risk. Other operational safety risks, such as those associated with powered industrial trucks, are similarly addressed.

Additionally, PepsiCo conducts job hazard analyses and provides appropriate PPE as indicated by those assessments. Further, PepsiCo provides complementary respiratory PPE to all employees at all manufacturing and distribution locations for their voluntary use.

Environmental management

We proactively monitor current and emerging environmental protection legislation and trends and follow a risk-based approach leveraging GEHSMS standards and focusing on the following key areas:

Prevention and control of spills

We work to prevent accidental spills and environmental releases. PepsiCo's spill prevention program includes requirements for site-level spill risk analysis, employee training, communicating appropriate reportable incidents to PepsiCo and the relevant regulatory agencies and completing follow-up actions. Sites develop and implement tailored Spill Prevention and Response Plans based on our GEHSMS Spill Prevention and Response Standard. These plans include best management practices to help prevent, respond to and minimize the risks (both for the environment and nearby communities) associated with spills of chemicals, hazardous substances, oils, petroleum products and other ingredients.

Safe chemical use, storage and disposal

PepsiCo has established a GEHSMS Chemical Storage and Management Standard to guide employees to safely use chemicals in a manner aiming to protect both our workers and the surrounding environment and communities. These standards define minimum requirements to help ensure compliance with applicable regulations, prevent accidental releases and protect our workforce, contractors and the public. All sites are required to implement a Chemical Storage and Management Program that addresses chemical selection, approval, use, handling, storage, transportation, employee training and hazard communication. Risk-based chemical selection and approval processes prioritize using nonhazardous or less hazardous substances and identify opportunities to eliminate the use of hazardous substances.

Reduction and control of air emissions

PepsiCo has established a GEHSMS Air Quality Management Standard to define minimum requirements and best management practices to help ensure that each PepsiCo operation complies with any applicable air regulations. Additionally, each location is required to apply air pollution risk management practices to evaluate and, where determined to be necessary, implement controls to reduce impacts on human health and the environment.

Elimination and management of waste

We strive to minimize operational waste generation while ensuring compliance with applicable regulations. We work to manage our waste holistically, from end to end within our operations, and we approach each site with a tailored strategy that takes into account local infrastructure and opportunities for improvement. Our waste management program is driven by our GEHSMS Waste Management Standard to promote a systematic approach to waste management across all facilities. 

Minimization, control and reuse of wastewater discharges

PepsiCo's GEHSMS Discharge of Wastewater Standard formalizes the expectation that wastewater discharged from company-owned and operated facilities will:

• Meet applicable regulatory discharge standards and other requirements;
• Meet minimum PepsiCo discharge standards; and
• Maintain an effluent quality that does not cause degradation of local water quality.

Access to safe potable water, sanitation and hygiene

Our business depends on all our employees in our manufacturing operations. We must provide employees access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in the workplace. This is aligned with our participation in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development's Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) pledge, which PepsiCo signed in 2015. This is outlined in PepsiCo's GEHSMS Potable Water Standard.

We also recognize that WASH impacts our employees beyond their work environment. It impacts them in their homes and in their communities, and having WASH available outside of work is an important element of our external Water ambitions.

Progress

Health and safety

All PepsiCo-owned manufacturing facilities are evaluated based on their execution of our GEHSMS standards. In addition to pursuing GEHSMS standards, 54% of our company-owned manufacturing facilities were certified to the ISO 45001 standard at the end of 2024. In 2024, our Lost Time Incident Rate remained nearly constant with the prior year, at 0.49 per 200,000 hours worked.

Environmental protection

All manufacturing facilities are executing our GEHSMS standards, which are designed to align with ISO standards. In addition to pursuing GEHSMS standards, 54% of our company-owned manufacturing facilities were certified to the ISO 14001 standard at the end of 2024.  Our performance against our key focus areas in company-owned manufacturing and distribution facilities was as follows:

• Prevention and control of spills: In 2024, we continued to strive for prevention of spills and, if they occurred, we worked to quickly respond to help ensure adherence to applicable laws and regulations and best management practices for responding to and minimizing the associated potential risks of spills.
• Safe chemical use, storage and disposal: In 2024, our efforts to ensure that chemicals are safely used, stored and properly disposed of in all relevant aspects of our operations continued.
• Reduction and control of air emissions: In 2024, PepsiCo continued exploring strategies to minimize air emissions from manufacturing operations through improved efficiency and emission control technologies.
• Elimination and management of waste: We continue to implement practices as we strive to reduce waste production in our manufacturing operations. For more on our efforts and performance on operational waste reduction, see Waste.
• Minimization, control and reuse of wastewater discharges: Responsible wastewater discharge from our manufacturing operations is a critical element of achieving net positive water impact. Achieving this is vital to the continuity of our manufacturing operations, as it helps ensure that we maintain our license to operate in local communities. We work closely with local regulators to help ensure compliance with wastewater permits at our manufacturing operations.
• Access to WASH: By the end of 2024, our manufacturing facilities' WASH conformance was at 98%.¹ WASH programs have been implemented at all company-owned manufacturing sites and assessment of conformance is monitored.
• Understanding and managing emerging environmental legislation: We continue to work closely with internal and external stakeholders around the world in an effort to stay abreast of new developments and compliant with all applicable regulations.

Strategic collaboration

PepsiCo continues to collaborate with industry leading multi-national corporations to align private sector efforts with the United Nations’ Decade of Action for Road Safety to improve road safety through our membership with Together for Safer Roads Coalition.

To further our water stewardship ambitions, we have worked with the Business for Social Responsibility Sustainable Water Group. Additionally, we collaborate with WASH4WORK – an organization focused on bringing water access to communities.

PepsiCo also collaborates and participates in a number of other external EHS organizations where we can benchmark, discuss and share best practices designed to improve EHS policies, procedures and strategies.