PepsiCo and WWF Cooperate
More than one billion PepsiCo products are consumed worldwide every day. That means the company has a big responsibility when it comes to sustainable packaging. PepsiCo is now supporting the animal and nature conservation organization WWF as part of its sustainability strategy.
As the second largest food company in the world, PepsiCo believes it has a responsibility to curb the amount of plastic waste. To this end, the company has teamed up with WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). The common strategic goal of the cooperation: to improve the company’s own ecological footprint through avoidance, increasing the reusable quota, circular economy, and more recycling, and to successfully implement PepsiCo’s sustainability agenda (Pep+) in Germany. According to the company, 88 percent of PepsiCo’s packaging is already recyclable, compostable, or biodegradable. By 2025, the goal is to make this 100 percent. As of October 2021, PepsiCo Germany has successfully completed the conversion of all beverage bottles in its carbonated beverage brands to 100 percent recycled plastic (rPET).
Recycling cycle for packaging
In the future, the company says it plans to have WWF provide advice on further strategies to increase reusable rates, on sustainable packaging materials, and the recyclability of packaging. “We are very pleased about the cooperation with PepsiCo”, says Dr. Martin Bethke, Executive Director Markets & Companies of WWF Germany. “We need fundamental changes in the way we do business and consume in order to reduce resource consumption, climate impacts, and waste generation. By working with companies as big as PepsiCo, we are getting closer and closer to one of our goals of keeping plastics and packaging that we need and can’t avoid in a recycling loop – close to 100 percent.”
During the period from March to mid-May, WWF will receive five cents for every rPET bottle of Pepsi MAX 0.5 liter (including the other sugar-free varieties Pepsi MAX Lemon and Pepsi MAX Cherry) returned, with bottle counting done by the depositing machine. The proceeds go to WWF Germany’s nature conservation work.
Avoiding waste
In addition, WWF and PepsiCo have agreed on several strategic as well as operational goals that will be implemented in the short term and long term over the next three years. For example, PepsiCo Deutschland GmbH is committed to making packaging avoidance a top priority. All non-avoidable packaging will be designed for efficient and effective resource management by making materials reusable and/or keeping them in high-quality material streams for as long as possible. If avoidance is not possible, PepsiCo strives for a closed-loop economy in which packaging never becomes waste.
