Pepsi and the Environment

Pepsi and “environmental sustainability”…sounds like an oxymoron to me![edit | edit source]

In a graph created by the American Plastics Council in 2002,^[1] the information shows that while bottle sales totals are steadily increasing, the rate of bottles recycled has stayed the same. For our country this means that more and more bottles are going into landfills every year, and there are a limited number of bottles that are recycled. This brings a concern to how the rest of the world is able to dispose of its plastic bottles. Pepsi-cola is currently trying to promote their business as a green and sustainable business. In 2008, they are planning on creating a plastic bottle that has 20 percent less plastic, in hopes to eliminate 20 million pounds of waste.^[2] However, it seems to me that the problem isn't the amount of plastic in the bottle, even though reducing that is helpful, but the problem is the amount of bottles that are produced.

In the environmental sustainability page of the Pepsi Bottling Group (PBC), there mission statement claims that, “The Pepsi Bottling Group is dedicated to meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations. We will work to employ sound environmental practices, ensure the well-being of our employees, value diversity, and support and improve the communities where we do business.”^[3]They claim that they are able to use 10% less water using reverse osmosis, conserve 1 million gallons of water per plant per year, and conserve 13,000 galls of water a day, all through new equipment and technologies.^[4] What I would like to know is how many gallons of water do they use a day originally. That 13,000 gallons could be about .005% for all that I know. Furthermore, they don’t take into account what they did with old equipment, and how much energy and resources were required to make the new equipment.

In regards to energy management, PBC also states that they have bought over a million dollars in renewable energy funding, placing them 4th on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Top 25 Green Power list, which PepsiCo is number 1. I have a hard time believing that Pepsi Cola could be the greenest company on the list. I checked the website for that top 25 list, and found that Pepsi Cola is actually second, with the US air force in third.^[5] Hmmm, it seems like the competition isn’t necessarily real “green” competition.

Bibliography[edit | edit source]

Page data

Authors	megan helms
License	CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language	English (en)
Related	0 subpages, 1 pages link here
Impact	531 page views
Created	May 16, 2008 by megan helms
Modified	June 9, 2023 by Felipe Schenone
Cite as	megan helms (2008–2023). "Pepsi and the Environment". Appropedia. Retrieved April 19, 2024.
API queries	basic, semantic, html, files, more