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 impact 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 sector EHS teams executing the strategy to reduce risk and drive continuous improvements.

PepsiCo’s system of risk management aims to reduce environmental incidents and occupational injuries and illnesses and enhance safe driving, while making, moving and selling our iconic products. Our EHS Policy formally establishes 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 comprehensive set of management and technical standards for key EHS risks across our business. GEHSMS is designed to fit our internal needs while reflecting ISO 14001 and 45001 standards, as well as to support compliance with regulations in the areas in which we operate. GEHSMS is intended to provide assurance 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 manufacturing facilities are required to comply with GEHSMS, and in addition, many of our facilities maintain ISO 14001 and 45001 certification. Though parallel to our own GEHSMS, pursuing dual certification supports 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 also manage compliance to EHS legislation by performing an applicability assessment of all current and emerging regulations covering worker safety, fleet management and environmental protection. This is a minimum expectation of PepsiCo stakeholders, core requirement of the PepsiCo EHS Policy and a fundamental element of our GEHSMS system.

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 and technological solutions and administrative initiatives to support our aim for a 'Beyond Zero - Pursue Positive’' EHS vision.

Improving on-the-road safety

Protecting our drivers and those within the communities in which we operate is paramount. Our approach leverages a combination of focus areas, which includes our drivers, the defined route and the vehicles we utilize within our operations. We train and build capability in our drivers 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 asses routes to determine potential risks that can be mitigated or avoided. We continue to invest in cutting edge vehicle safety technologies that both aid and protect our drivers against the potential for collision. Also, PepsiCo continues to collaborate with industry leading, multi-national corporations and industry coalitions to benchmark and holistically improve road safety.

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 ensuring physical and safety awareness measures are implemented. 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. Another risk control that is implemented, used and made available for all employees at every location within PepsiCo is Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The type of PPE that is made available or worn is specific to a hazard that may be present at that location and based on risk assessments. Where PPE is used, employees are trained in the correct way to acquire, wear and dispose of it and to understand what hazard or risk in which the PPE protects.

Auditing EHS performance

We have a strong GEHSMS audit process, which includes self-assessments, internal audits and external audits to confirm the strength and governance of our EHS performance. Our GEHSMS program is designed to mitigate our risks and comply with local laws, regulations and other requirements. It also provides a means to guide continuous improvement.

Safety for all employees — our EHS culture

We 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 our people and actively encourage participation in building our proactive EHS culture — which we call “Courage to Care”. To do so, we have a multitude of policies, procedures and risk control methodologies designed to protect all employees in our operations. We also ensure EHS materials are available in a variety of languages to meet the needs of our dynamic work force.

Environmental management

In addition to our internal programs that we have in place to minimize environmental impact, we use a system of internal and external auditing processes to monitor compliance with our GEHSMS program and environmental regulations in the jurisdictions in which we operate.

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 priorities:

Prevention and control of spills

We work to prevent all spills and unexpected environmental releases. PepsiCo's spill prevention program includes requirements for site-level spill risk analysis, operator training, communicating all 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, including those for cleaning processes, in a manner aiming to protect both our workers and the environment. These standards define minimum requirements to 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, where needed, to reduce impacts on human health and the environment.

Elimination and management of waste

We strive to minimize waste generation and achieve virtually zero waste to landfill in our direct operations, while ensuring compliance with applicable regulations.¹ We 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 the greatest 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 operations who ensure the safety and quality of our products. This means, at a minimum, we must provide employees access to safe potable water, sanitation and hygiene. 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

At the end of 2023, 97% of our company-owned manufacturing facilities are certified to the ISO 45001 standard. All manufacturing facilities are executing our GEHSMS standards, which are designed to align with ISO standards. In 2023, our Lost Time Incident Rate increased from the prior year, up 0.02, to 0.48 per 200,000 hours worked.²

Environmental protection

At the end of 2023, 97% of our company-owned manufacturing facilities are certified to the ISO 14001 standard. All manufacturing facilities are executing our GEHSMS standards, which are designed to align with ISO standards. Our performance against our key focus areas was as follows:

• Prevention and control of spills: In 2023, we continued to strive for prevention of spills and, if they occurred, we quickly responded to help ensure adherence to applicable laws and regulations and best management practices for responding to and minimizing the associated risks of spills. PepsiCo’s spill program also includes requirements for site-level spill risk analysis, operator training, communicating all reportable incidents to PepsiCo and the relevant agencies and completing follow-up actions.
• Safe chemical use, storage and disposal: In 2023, our efforts continued to ensure that chemicals are safely used, stored and properly disposed of in all relevant aspects of our operations.
• Reduction and control of air emissions: In 2023, PepsiCo continued exploring strategies to minimize air emissions from manufacturing operations and transportation operations through improved vehicle efficiency, cleaner fuels and electric vehicles.
• Elimination and management of waste: We continue to implement practices as we strive to send virtually zero waste to landfill as a result of 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. In 2023, approximately 98%³ of the wastewater from our manufacturing operations met PepsiCo and regulatory discharge standards.
• Access to WASH: By the end of 2023, our manufacturing facilities' WASH conformance was at 97%.³ WASH programs have been implemented at all company-owned and -operated manufacturing sites, and assessment of conformance is monitored.
• Understanding and managing emerging environmental legislation: We continue to work closely with internal and external partners around the world to stay abreast of all developments and compliant with all applicable regulations.

As we work to embed EHS excellence across our organization, we have made progress, but faced challenges along the way.

Strategic partnerships

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 follow through on our commitment to water stewardship, we have partnered with the Business for Social Responsibility Sustainable Water Group. Further, 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.