PepsiCo continues working to cut climate emissions, use of virgin plastic

03 / 07 / 2023

By Marwa Nassar - -

PepsiCo continues working toward driving down climate emissions and the use of virgin plastic in light of its 2022 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Summary which showed significant progress on its nutrition, agriculture, social (people and communities), water-use efficiency and safe water access goals.

The report showed that PepsiCo has helped farmers become more resilient and has reduced carbon emissions from agriculture by more than 330,000 metric tons – the equivalent of taking more than 73,000 cars off the road for a year.

More than doubled its regenerative farming footprint in 2022 to greater than 900,000 acres globally, the report said.

Commenting on PepsiCo’s approach to engaging farmers and leveraging regenerative agriculture practices to address climate change, National Association of Wheat Growers CEO Chandler Goulesaid, said “PepsiCo is at the forefront, demonstrating how food companies and producers can collaborate effectively to cultivate sustainable, affordable, and safe food. PepsiCo has made meaningful investments in agriculture, and they have led the way in engaging growers from the outset to ensure sustainability objectives are both attainable and mutually beneficial.”

The company acknowledged that it aspires to greater progress for packaging and emissions reductions. PepsiCo is working on plans to help advance its goals in these areas, prioritizing actions which are expected to make the biggest difference.

For the second year, 75% of its convenient foods portfolio volume did not exceed 1.1 grams of saturated fat per 100 calories in addition to further reducing added sugars and sodium in its portfolio of products in 2022.

The report said that PepsiCo managed to improve water-use efficiency by 22% in operations since 2015 in high water-risk areas and it is now approaching its 2025 goal of 25%.

The company managed to provide safe water access to another 12 million people in 2022, with the total number standing at more than 80 million people since 2006.

The report reports the progress realized in one year since the launch of PepsiCo Positive (pep+) in 2021.

pep+ is an end-to-end transformation program touching virtually every aspect of PepsiCo’s business – from how ingredients are grown; to how its iconic portfolio of products are made, moved and sold; to what choices are offered to consumers. pep+ is the framework through which all actions on setting and working toward ESG targets are driven.

Meanwhile, Jim Andrew, PepsiCo Chief Sustainability Officer, said “Decoupling our business growth from our resource use is always going to be difficult but meeting our long-term targets is critical and we are rapidly learning how and where we need to adjust. We issued $2.25 billion in green bonds since 2019, and we have made – and will continue to make – substantial investments toward key parts of our pep+ agenda, including becoming net zero and reducing the use of virgin plastics. We will also work diligently to remove barriers to progress, many of which are regulatory in nature. The challenges to addressing systemic issues are enormous and it will take a multi-stakeholder approach to get to where we all want to be.”

PepsiCo is committed to providing transparent reporting and has been recognized by Corporate Secretary’s Corporate Governance Awards for three consecutive years, as “Best ESG Reporting” for a large cap company.