PepsiCo plans reduction in use of virgin plastic

PepsiCo announced on Wednesday that the company will begin to reduce the use of virgin plastic and expand its SodaStream sparkling-water business in an effort to combat plastic waste.

The brand launched the effort under a new initiative called “pep+,” with the aim to cut the use of virgin plastic per serving in half by 2030 and to use 50 percent of recycled material in all plastic packaging, according to Reuters.

The company hopes to easily gauge its use of plastic across its snack, soda, chips and oatmeal products by using a standard measurement of the amount of plastic needed to serve 12 ounces of beverages and 1 ounce of food, the news outlet noted.

Coca-Cola also announced plans to use fully recycled plastic in its bottles, after both companies were targeted by climate change activists due to their production of single-use plastics. Over a year, Coca-Cola was found by a Greenpeace report to produce more than 100 billion bottles of single-use plastics, while PepsiCo was found to use nearly 2.3 million metric tonnes of plastic over the same time frame.

PepsiCo Chief Executive Ramon Laguarta told Reuters that if the company is successful in getting its SodaStream sparkling water into more markets globally, that it could cut the use of over 200 billion plastic bottles by 2030.

“While recycled plastic is part of the solution, we are creating a whole new model with SodaStream, which is essential to our growth strategy in beverages,” Laguarta said, according to Reuters.