Global food and beverage firm PepsiCo has announced that it plans to use 25% recycled content in its plastic packaging by 2025 as part of its sustainability plastics vision.
Image: PepsiCo vice chairman and chief scientific officer Mehmood Khan. Photo: courtesy of PepsiCo, Inc.
The company said to reach the goal recycled plastic content it will collaborate with its suppliers and partners, helping to educate consumers and advocating for enhanced recycling infrastructure and regulatory reform.
The goal includes a specific target of achieving a 33% recycled-content level for its PET (polyethylene terephthalate) beverage bottles by 2025.
PepsiCo vice chairman and chief scientific officer Mehmood Khan said: “PepsiCo’s sustainable plastics vision is to build a PepsiCo where plastics need never become waste. We intend to achieve that vision by reducing, recycling and reusing, and reinventing our plastic packaging – and leading global change through partnerships.
“Already, PepsiCo is one of the world’s largest users of food-grade recycled PET. To further boost recycled content across all plastic packaging and drive progress towards a circular economy for plastics, it is vital to dramatically increase global waste collection and recycling rates through investment in recycling infrastructure and technology.”
The new target of PepsiCo builds on goals announced in 2016 under the company’s Performance with Purpose 2025 Agenda.
As per the 2025 Agenda, PepsiCo plans to strive to design 100% of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable or biodegradable.
The company also seeks to increase its use of recycled materials; to reduce the carbon impact of its packaging and, in partnership with the PepsiCo Foundation, to work to increase recycling rates.
Earlier this month, PepsiCo signed a multi-year supply agreement with Loop Industries to incorporate Loop PET plastic, which is 100% recycled material, into its product packaging by mid-2020.
Last month, PepsiCo joined the NaturALL Bottle Alliance, a research consortium formed by Danone, Nestlé Waters and Origin Materials to speed up the development of packaging solutions made with 100% sustainable and renewable resources.
In July 2018, The PepsiCo Foundation and nonprofit, The Recycling Partnership, launched All in on Recycling, a residential recycling challenge to make it easier for 25 million families across the US to recycle.