‘Nothing tastes better than a 100 per cent recycled bottle’: Pepsi Max debuts new recycling campaign
Campaign follows hot on heels of wide-ranging new sustainability strategy from PepsiCo, but campaigners argue drinks giant must strengthen plans
PepsiCo has this week launched a major new campaign for its Pepsi MAX brand, highlighting that its flagship drink is now available in 100 per cent recycled bottles.
The campaign, titled ‘Nothing tastes better than a 100 per cent recycled bottle’, showcases the company’s new 500ml and 600ml bottles, which are now made from fully recycled plastic. The campaign features adverts across television, billboards, digital platforms, and social media.
“Pepsi MAX is our biggest beverage brand in Great Britain, so making the switch to 100 per cent recycled plastic bottles will make a real difference in helping us reduce our environmental impact,” said Jamie Mackay, general manager for UK beverages at PepsiCo. “We’re continuing to work towards eliminating virgin plastic from our ready-to-drink beverages and helping consumers enjoy those products knowing that what they’re drinking now has less impact on the planet.”
Alongside the Pepsi brand switch, all single serve 7UP brand bottles will similarly be packaged and sold with 100 per cent recycled plastic from next month, reducing carbon emissions per bottle by roughly 40 per cent, the company said. The move follows the decision earlier this year to transition 7UP bottles from green to clear plastic to better enable recycling.
The news comes just days after PepsiCo announced a new sustainability strategy, dubbed pep+ (pep Positive), that introduces a new wave of climate targets across all parts of its business, from sourcing ingredients to packaging.
Earlier in the year, the drinks and snacks giant committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2040 and to replenish more water than it uses by 2030. In its new pep+ strategy, the company places the two commitments under a ‘Positive value chain’ pillar to which it adds a further target to halve its use of virgin plastic per serving by 2030.
The new target follows consultation with activist investor group As You Sow, which saw PepsiCo agree to cut the total virgin non-renewable plastic used across its brands by 20 per cent by 2030, equating to a 460,000 tonne reduction in plastic over the next decade, the same as halving the plastic per serving of its food and drink portfolios. The company is relying on the uptake of its SodaStream business, which sees customers replace single-use drinks bottles with an at-home machine, to help achieve the goal, in addition to incorporating 50 per cent recycled plastic in its packaging.
“We are pleased that the company set a significant goal to reduce plastic use by one-fifth,” Conrad MacKerron, senior vice president of As You Sow said in response to the commitment. “However, we have some concern that the timeline for reduction is five years longer than several of its peers have committed to.”
In August, PepsiCo was labelled as the company with the second biggest plastic packaging footprint in the UK, following a branded plastic pollution audit carried out by conservation charity Surfers Against Sewage. Mondelez International, the parent company of Cadbury’s, was also in the top 12 plastic packaging polluters but is one of four large companies to commit to a more ambitious timeline of plastic reduction by 2025, according to As You Sow. The other companies include Keurig Dr Pepper, Target, and Walmart.
“Given Pepsi’s huge plastic footprint and rapidly increasing pollution of land and oceans by plastic packaging, reductions need to be achieved as quickly as possible,” MacKerron added. As You Sow ranked PepsiCo as a D+ grade in its Waste and Opportunity 2020 report, in which it scored 50 companies based on their plastic pollution. The advocacy non-profit said that the new commitments do not address PepsiCo’s lowest scoring areas from the report, including the need to increase reusable and refillable packaging and provide financial support for recycling infrastructure.
Elsewhere in its new strategy, PepsiCo announced it would continue supporting the Holy Grail digital watermarks initiative, which places digital codes with information about the types of plastic used on packaging to facilitate sorting at recycling centres, and will participate in trails of the watermarks on PepsiCo’s packaging in France and Germany in 2022.
The company is also set to continue investing in infrastructure for recycling of flexible packaging through Extended Producer Responsibility schemes and direct investment in schemes, such as the Flexible Packaging Fund in the UK, it said, while the expansion of its SodaStream business, which it acquired in 2018, should help to replace single-use plastics with refillable options. the company said it plans to add more flavours, such as Pepsi Zero Sugar and Lipton, to its SodaStream range in 23 markets as part of the third pillar in its sustainability strategy, Positive Choice, which aims to give customers the option of consuming products which contain no single-use plastic.
In response to As You Sow’s concerns, Archana Jagannathan, senior director of Sustainable Packaging at PepsiCo Europe, said: “There are several external factors we need in place to fulfil our global goals. These include a regulatory framework that allows use of recycled and renewable plastics, increased availability of these non-virgin plastics, at affordable prices, which are suitable for food and beverage packaging. In Europe, where we see some of these enablers in place, we are going to move faster.”
PepsiCo is introducing 100 per cent recylced plastic bottles in 11 European countries by the end of 2022, Jagannathan said, and testing models for reusable packaging in addition to participating in the development of paper-based recycled bottle by eco-packaging company, Pulpex.
In addition to its packaging commitments, the ‘Positive Choices’ pillar of the company’s new strategy sees PepsiCo set targets to incorporate more plant-based ingredients and reduce added sugar in its products.
The company also announced a new target to restore around seven million acres of land, equal to the size of the company’s entire agriculture footprint and eliminate three million tonnes of greenhouse gases in the next 10 years. The target builds on its Sustainable Farming Programme, which works with farmers across countries to develop restorative practices. For example, in the UK PepsiCo will trial technology that converts potato peelings from the production of Walker’s crisps to low-carbon fertilizer as part of its plans.
“This is a major transformation for our business,” said Silviu Popovici, PepsiCo Europe’s CEO. “It is the right thing for our planet and for people as we evolve our portfolio and provide positive choices for consumers. This requires long-term investment, new ways of engaging across our value chain and a culture shift to do things differently. However, making these changes alone won’t be enough. We need to collaborate with governments and other stakeholders to help us go faster and ensure we have the right infrastructure and eco-systems to succeed as we reimagine the way food is grown, made and enjoyed.”
