2Sustain

With a nod to World Water Day yesterday, PepsiCo has announced a new set of commitments aimed at providing access to safe water to three million people in developing countries by 2015. In addition, the company says it is will continue to promote greater water-use efficiency across its operations and to source water in ways that respect communities and ecosystems.

In 2007, PepsiCo set a global goal to reduce water consumption by 20 percent per unit of production by 2015. To date, the company has achieved a more than 15 percent improvement in water use efficiency as compared to the company’s 2006 baseline. PepsiCo has also:

• saved more than 11 billion liters of water through efficiency improvements in 2009.

• begun cleaning new Gatorade bottles with purified air instead of rinsing with water. Piloted first in the US, the method works so well it is being adopted, along with other conservation techniques, by bottling facilities around the world, saving billions of liters of water from going down the drain.

• reduced water usage at its largest PepsiCo Walkers’ potato chip facility in the UK by 42 percent between 2001 and 2007. Potatoes naturally contain a lot of water, and Walkers is working to capture that moisture and use it to make the UK facilities essentially self-sufficient in water, unplugged from the water mains.

• cut the water usage required to grow potatoes for Lay’s potato chips in China by more than half. Agriculture uses 70 percent of the world’s water. That’s why in China, PepsiCo is sharing conservation techniques with its local farmers. Te farmers are replacing traditional flood irrigation with pivot and drip irrigation. In drip irrigation, small holes in pipes literally ‘drip’ water on the field, reducing water usage by up to 50 percent.

• reduced water use in manufacturing in India by more than 45 percent and conserved more than 3 billion liters of water since 2007, achieving positive water balance – giving back more water than the company consumed.

• worked with farmers in India to reduce the amount of water used in rice cultivation. The company introduced a technology called “direct seeding.” Rather than growing seedlings in a nursery, planting them, then flooding the fields, direct seeding allows seeds to be planted directly into the ground, bypassing the nursery. This also removes the need for flood irrigation, and saves as much 30 percent of water needed. In 2009, direct seeding was extended to more than 6,500 acres of land resulting in savings of 5.5 billion liters of water.

• equipped the Frito-Lay facility in Casa Grande, Arizona with a state-of-the-art water filtration and purification system to recycle and reuse approximately 80 percent of the process water used in production. For 10 consecutive years, PepsiCo has significantly reduced the amount of water used to make Frito-Lay products in North America.

• has committed more than $15 million through the PepsiCo Foundation since2005 to initiatives that provide access to safe water and sanitation to communities in developing countries.

• partnered with Water.org, Safe Water Network, The Energy Resources Institute, China Women’s Development Foundation and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in order for the PepsiCo Foundation will reach its goal of providing access to safe water and sanitation to 1 million people. These projects are helping to install village water and irrigation systems, establishing water health centers, constructing nearly 750 rainwater harvesting cisterns, improve sanitation programs and recharge aquifers in developing communities, particularly in Ghana, Kenya, Brazil, China and India.

Obviously, PepsiCo is well ahead of the curve when it comes to managing water scarcity risks.

More information about PepsiCo’s commitment to environmental stewardship can be found at www.Pepsico.com/water.