At its Cork, Ireland, facility, PepsiCo teams have pioneered the use of hydrotreated vegetable oil to power operations. The company’s R&D experts developed a technique that captures and treats vapor released when cooking potatoes and uses it to power operations at sites in India, Mexico, Poland and Thailand. In the U.K., oat farmers are growing resilient crops thanks to a project introducing pollinator habitats.
These initiatives reflect the types of creative and effective actions furthering the company’s pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) transformation that puts sustainability at the core of its operations. PepsiCo’s 2023 ESG Summary lays out the efforts the company has made since pep+ launched in 2021 and offers considerations on future focus areas.
“Through investment, innovative thinking, partnership and the impactful actions of our global associates, we’ve already reached some of our water, DEI and nutrition goals and made excellent progress on others, while continuing to address the challenges we face,” says Jim Andrew, Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer. “I’m proud of the collective progress we’ve made so far and optimistic for continued advances in many areas as we work with others who share our goals and the aim to build a stronger, more sustainable future for all.”
Read below to learn more about how PepsiCo is advancing toward its pep+ ambitions:
PepsiCo’s business depends on agriculture. The company sources more than 35 crops and ingredients from farmers around the world. In 2023, PepsiCo doubled its regenerative agriculture footprint to more than 1.8 million acres, moving closer to its goal of covering 7 million acres by 2030. PepsiCo is pursuing new approaches to achieve these ambitions like large-scale partnerships. Last year, PepsiCo announced a seven-year collaboration with Walmart that aims to support regenerative practices on more than 2 million acres of farmland in the U.S. and Canada.
PepsiCo achieved its goal of a 25% improvement in water-use efficiency at company-owned locations in high water-risk areas (compared to a 2015 baseline) two years ahead of schedule, a milestone in the company’s ambition of becoming net water positive by 2030 — that is, replenishing more water than the company uses. Employees are playing an integral role in meeting those targets. In just one of the many examples, R&D Engineer Julia Krause identified a solution that reduced water usage by up to 87% during one part of the corn-washing process for foods like Tostitos and Fritos by making a computer code change. And last year alone, the company replenished approximately 69% of the water used in company-owned manufacturing facilities in high-risk watersheds, the equivalent of 12 billion liters.
Last year, PepsiCo introduced two new global goals to further lower sodium across its convenient foods portfolio and deliver more servings of diverse ingredients such as legumes, whole grains, plant-based proteins, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds by 2030. This builds on the company’s portfolio that already meets a saturated fats reduction goal and has more than half of its beverages below a lower added sugar target set in 2021.
PepsiCo is innovating ways to make packaging more sustainable. It became the first beverage company in North America to announce that it would replace plastic rings on beverage multipacks with a paper-based design — a step toward the goal of reducing virgin plastic derived from non-renewable sources.
PepsiCo aims to achieve net-zero emissions across its entire value chain by 2040. As of 2023, the company had reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions — which originate from direct operations — by 33%, advancing toward the company's goal of a 75% reduction by 2030. One way PepsiCo has made progress is by continuing to acquire new electric, hybrid and natural gas vehicles to expand the company’s sustainable fleets in the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Frito-Lay North America unveiled its first-ever 100% fully electric vehicle site in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2023; and new electric vehicles deployed in Mexico aim to enable PepsiCo to reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 2,800 metric tons annually compared to gas-powered equivalents.
Read the full PepsiCo 2023 ESG Summary.