packaging

Why it matters

Our Approach

Packaging plays an essential role in safely delivering our products to customers and consumers. PepsiCo designs our packaging materials to balance several critical criteria, including compliance with food safety regulations, maintaining freshness and quality of the product, environmental sustainability, affordability, and consumer preferences, including convenience. Our sustainable packaging efforts support our PepsiCo Positive ambition in two ways: we are striving to build a more circular and inclusive Positive Value Chain by contributing to a more sustainable supply chain for our packaging; and we are also continuing to evolve our portfolio of food and beverage products by providing Positive Choices for our consumers with innovative packaging solutions.

We recognize and share the concern that some packaging, when disposed of improperly after a product has been consumed, may become waste in the marine environment or on land. We are working on a broad set of initiatives to ensure appropriate end-of-life solutions, improve the carbon footprint of our packaging, as well as other environmental impacts, and ensure protection of human rights especially in the informal recycling sector.

PepsiCo Positive sustainable and innovative packaging solution agendas:

By 2025:

• Our goal is for 100% of our packaging to be recyclable, compostable, biodegradable, or reusable
• Invest to increase recycling rates in key markets

By 2030:

• Cut virgin plastic from non-renewable sources per serving across our food and beverage portfolio by 50% through:
  • Scaling new business models that avoid or minimize single-use packaging materials (e.g., models that reuse, refill, prepare at home, utilize concentrates like powders, drops, etc.)
  • Reducing our absolute tonnage of virgin plastic from non-renewable sources by 20%, including by:
    • Using market-leading bio-based and renewable materials
    • Using 50% recycled content in our plastic packaging
• Develop and deploy disruptive sustainable packaging materials and new models for convenient foods and beverages (e.g. powders, bio-based materials, reusable or low/no package models)

We aim to achieve these goals by fostering cross-industry and public-private partnerships; advocating for improved recycling, composting, broader waste management infrastructure and regulatory reform; supporting the advancement of new materials, enhanced recycling technologies, and alternative delivery models; collaborating with suppliers and partners; and helping to increase consumer education and acceptance, all of which, we consider necessary. For example, we signed an MoU with the National Center for Waste Management in July 2020, as part of an ambitious target to push the circular economy agenda in the Kingdom. As part of the agreement, we placed 15 smart bins across the Makkah walkway, Saudi Arabia’s holiest city, to divert plastic away from landfills.

Packaging Policy Advocacy

Government support to recycling and composting industries presents a vital opportunity for clean technology investment and growth. PepsiCo and other industry peers play an important role by investing in research and development, purchasing recycled content, supporting consumer education, and making financial contributions towards improving recycling collection. We encourage policy makers to further support the recycling industry in other ways, including the following:

We have partnered with Naqaa Sustainability Solutions to set up recycling bins across 13 key locations in Abha, Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam, namely sports complexes, compounds and malls. We are also collaborating with the Al Diriyah Gate Authority to support their recycling efforts and campaigning in two schools and one public location. Our work in these communities involves placement of recycling bins, communicating on the importance of recycling, educating consumers through workshops on the recycling to prevent contamination of waste bins, following up on quality of recyclables placed by the community members, and collecting recyclables to be diverted away from landfills.

Increasing collection and recycling rates supports a circular economy by ensuring the material we put into the market is recovered, its value is preserved, and it does not end up as litter or in landfills. We seek to improve collection and recycling infrastructure through policy and programs as well as consumer education and engagement.

We are proud to share that our bottling partners have signed contracts with KSA’s largest waste collector, Wasco, to upscale the organization’s efforts for PET collection. We are committed to collecting and recycling the equivalent of 100% of PepsiCo’s plastic footprint in KSA by 2025.Through our select partners, we have addressed various channels of collection from sports centers, compounds, events, neighborhoods, landfills, and universities:

• Aquafina and its partners have and will continue to drive consumer awareness campaigns in the Kingdom to educate the public on keeping the country clean, the importance of recycling, how to recycle, and offering incentives to recycle through digital content and on ground activations in compounds, sports centers, and events in Saudi Arabia, with opportunities for consumers to engage directly and get rewarded. Aquafina has a history of promoting recycling within the Kingdom. In 2019, the brand introduced initiatives at the Dakar Rally and Formula-E that encouraged spectators to recycle their waste on-site, enabling the events to reduce their carbon footprints.  

In 2021, our bottling partners have partnered with WASCO, a local waste collection company, to accelerate plastics collection across their respective operations, incentivizing collection growth from neighborhoods, universities and landfills.