PURCHASE, N.Y., Oct. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- PepsiCo, Inc.
(NASDAQ:PEP), The PepsiCo Foundation, the company's philanthropic
arm, and national nonprofit The Recycling Partnership today
announced that their All In On Recycling challenge, the
largest ever industry-led residential recycling challenge in
the United States, has
successfully raised $25 million in a
little more than a year since its launch in July 2018.
The All In On Recycling challenge seeks to make recycling
easier for more than 25 million U.S. families and support a
circular economy with investments in infrastructure and education.
Currently, due to a lack of infrastructure, widely varying
municipal recycling programs and low awareness of proper recycling
practices, more than half of the materials that could be recycled
from U.S. households are lost.
Funds raised from the challenge are helping cities invest in new
infrastructure, like curbside carts, which are a proven way to
double the number of recyclables recovered. The Recycling
Partnership has found that in some places, only one of every four
aluminum cans and one out of every three water bottles ends up in a
recycling bin. In comparison, the total amount of materials
collected from a single home can increase as much as 120 pounds per
year with a switch from a small bin to a larger cart, according to
The Recycling Partnership.
Funding is also supporting education programs to teach residents
what can and cannot be recycled. Education can help prevent
residents from "wishcycling" – tossing items that seem recyclable
in with their household recycling, which can damage recycling
machines and contaminate other recyclables.
"When The Recycling Partnership and PepsiCo launched this
challenge a year ago, we recognized the need for significant
collective action to improve recycling in the U.S., and we are
pleased to see our partners and peers step up and lend support to
this effort," said Simon Lowden,
Chief Sustainability Officer at PepsiCo. "However, this is only the
beginning, and we must continue to work together to create the
scale of change needed to strengthen our recycling system. This is
critical to reduce waste that ends up in our oceans and
environments, to meet the growing demand for recycled content that
powers the circular economy and to support a more sustainable
future."
Over the past year, through the All In On Recycling
challenge, The Recycling Partnership has made investments to
improve recycling programs in Ohio, Iowa,
Minnesota, North Dakota, Texas and New
Jersey, and will expand to North
Carolina, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Tennessee and others in the next year. To
date, nearly 115,000 carts have been distributed or are in the
process of going to households across the country as a result of
this effort – significant progress towards the challenge's
five-year goal to distribute carts to more than 550,000 households.
The new carts are expected to capture 55 million pounds of new
recyclables per year. Additionally, it's estimated that the efforts
to help Americans recycle more and recycle better will reach more
than 19 million households within the next year.
"Developing a sustainable recycling system is critical to the
future of our planet. The All In On Recycling challenge
gives us the opportunity to come together as communities, regions
and states, global corporations and as individuals, to change our
path towards a healthier future," said Keefe Harrison, CEO of The Recycling
Partnership. "A circular economy where global brands can partner
with nonprofits to invest in community infrastructure to better
capture recyclables, educate residents on what to recycle and where
and bring all stakeholders together in partnership is one that
everyone should get behind. After all, we're all in this bin
together."
One area that has benefitted from the investment is Central Ohio, where the Recycling Partnership,
working with the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, distributed 38,000 carts to five
communities – Gahanna,
Reynoldsburg, Bexley, Blendon
Township and Westerville –
earlier this year. These households were upgraded from 18-gallon
bins to 65-gallon carts, which can not only collect more materials,
are easier for residents to take to the curb and can be more
efficiently collected, but also reduce litter because their lidded
tops prevent materials from flying out. Officials are now
performing a "capture rate" study on the materials collected from
these carts to identify areas for increased recycling education and
opportunities for improvement. Results of the study are anticipated
in November.
An additional Recycling Partnership grant has funded a recycling
education campaign in several city of Columbus neighborhoods to reduce contamination
in the city's recycling stream and control program costs. "This
important grant has allowed us to further educate residents about
acceptable items to place in their curbside recycling containers,"
said Tim Swauger, Administrator of
the Columbus Division of Refuse Collection. "As a result, many
residents are gaining a better understanding of how to recycle
correctly to benefit the sustainability of our recycling
program.
Announced in July 2018, the All
In On Recycling challenge was kickstarted with an initial
$10 million in funding from The
PepsiCo Foundation. Over the past year, $15
million in support has been raised from major companies and
organizations across a wide variety of industries, including Alcoa
Foundation, Colgate-Palmolive and Target. In addition to these
contributions, more than 2,800 communities are expected to
participate in the initiative, which will triple the collective
investment, catalyzing roughly $75
million in municipal funding and bringing the total amount
of support to $100 million.
Currently, more than $12 million in
municipal funding has been invested in U.S. recycling as a result
of the challenge, with more in the pipeline.
"As a founding partner of The Recycling Partnership, Alcoa
Foundation has always believed in The Partnership's mission to
transform recycling for good," said Rosa García Pineiro, Vice
President of Sustainability, Alcoa Corporation and President of
Alcoa Foundation. "We're proud to support the All In On
Recycling challenge, which calls on leading companies to join
PepsiCo, Alcoa and others to help
The Recycling Partnership drive change and make it easier for 25
million families across the country to recycle more and recycle
better."
The Recycling Partnership estimates this challenge will
ultimately result in a total greenhouse gas avoidance of 5.5
million tons of CO2, which equates to the removal of
more than 1 million cars from the road for a year. The projected
1.9 million tons of quality recyclable materials, including 7
billion bottles and cans – will make this possible.
The PepsiCo Foundation's All In On Recycling challenge is
part of PepsiCo's commitment to build a world where plastics need
never become waste – focused on reducing the amount of plastics
used, boosting recycling rates and reinventing plastic packaging.
As part of this effort, PepsiCo announced earlier this year that
its premium water brand LIFEWTR will be packaged in 100 percent
rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate) in the U.S., as the
company's Naked Juice brand currently is. Additionally, its
sparkling water brand bubly will no longer be packaged in plastic
starting in 2020, and its Aquafina water will be available in
aluminum cans in U.S. food service outlets while the brand tests
the move to retail. PepsiCo has committed to make 100 percent of
its packaging recyclable, compostable or biodegradable by 2025. In
September, the company accelerated its plastic waste reduction
efforts, announcing a new target to reduce 35 percent of virgin
plastic content across its beverage portfolio by 2025, which
equates to the elimination of 2.5 million metric tons of cumulative
virgin plastic.
Media assets about this work are available for download at
https://pepsi.co/media.
About The Recycling Partnership
The Recycling
Partnership (www.recyclingpartnership.org) is a national nonprofit
organization that leverages corporate partner funding to transform
recycling for good in cities and towns all across America. As the
only organization in the country that engages the full recycling
supply chain from the corporations that manufacture products and
packaging to local governments charged with recycling to industry
end markets, haulers, material recovery facilities, and converters;
The Recycling Partnership positively impacts recycling at every
step in the process. By the end of 2019, The Recycling Partnership
expects to have served more than 1,300 communities with tools,
resources and technical support, helped place nearly 600,000
recycling carts, reached 60 million households, and helped
companies and communities invest more than $55 million in recycling infrastructure.
About PepsiCo
PepsiCo products are enjoyed by
consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200
countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more
than $64 billion in net revenue in
2018, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that
includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and Tropicana.
PepsiCo's product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable
foods and beverages, including 22 brands that generate more than
$1 billion each in estimated annual
retail sales.
Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in
Convenient Foods and Beverages by Winning with Purpose. "Winning
with Purpose" reflects our ambition to win sustainably in the
marketplace and embed purpose into all aspects of the business. For
more information, visit www.pepsico.com.
About PepsiCo Foundation
Established in 1962, The
PepsiCo Foundation works with nonprofit partners and invests in the
essential elements of a sustainable food system – helping alleviate
hunger, manage water and waste responsibly, and support women as
champions of nutrition from farm to family.
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SOURCE PepsiCo, Inc.