Did you know that Gatorade comes in tablets that you can put in your personal water bottle?
The product, which will launch in spring 2023, will reduce the amount of plastic the company uses in manufacturing as customers switch from bottles to tablets. Ramon Laguarta, PepsiCo's chairman and CEO, said it's an innovation that will soon be replicated in the $91.5 billion food and beverage company's sodas, water, tea and other beverages. .
“The reason we're expanding capacity is clearly an opportunity for consumers,” Laguarta told financial analysts in a presentation in late February. “And we're going to give [it] It's even more of a priority because it's not only at the heart of consumer trends, but also a positive choice. Eliminating plastic eliminates a large amount of emissions that result from moving liquids. ”
The tablets and powders are just one example of how environmental considerations are integrated into the company's overarching business strategy, which it calls “PepsiCo Positive.”
“PepsiCo Positive is not a sustainability program. PepsiCo Positive is a corporate transformation program,” said Jim Andrew, Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer.
Here are four ways PepsiCo is leveraging technology and finance to reduce operational impact.
Become friends with the Chief Digital Officer
“We're a company that's very good with goals and numbers,” Andrew said in an interview with GreenBiz in mid-February. “We make all the different kinds of decisions that are made within a company, so we wanted to be able to say that these are a set of goals that need to be considered as part of the decision-making. ”
To achieve that, PepsiCo is incorporating data on water consumption, recycled materials purchases, packaging, energy and other metrics into an information “cockpit” that management uses to make decisions. is. Currently, the most complete information is on packaging, he said.
Under its latest packaging goals, PepsiCo is committed to designing 100 percent of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable, biodegradable or reusable by 2025. PepsiCo is under pressure to do better, as a New York state lawsuit accusing the company of plastic pollution alleges. .
Check your progress quarterly instead of annually
Data for PepsiCo's systems comes from enterprise software applications, including procurement systems, but the company hasn't completely moved away from the spreadsheets that most sustainability teams rely on to collect information. Andrew joked that he speaks to Athina Kaniula, PepsiCo's chief strategy and transformation officer and head of digital, at least 20 times a day when they're in the office. Within our digital organization, we have a dedicated team working to incorporate sustainability metrics into our business planning processes.
PepsiCo's data is continuously recorded and reviewed quarterly. Many companies rely on his one reporting activity per year. “We can ultimately ask whether we are where we need to be in 2024, 2025,” Andrew said. “Then you can ask, 'What are we doing about it?'” As opposed to at the end of the year saying, “Oh, we didn't hit our goal. Too bad.” We are still on the way. ”
Identify low-cost, high-impact actions
Sustainability is also part of how the company plans acquisitions and capital expenditures. The company's former chief financial officer's bonus ranges from encouraging farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture to finding cleaner alternatives to natural gas used in PepsiCo's processing and bottling facilities. The entire process was concerned with whether sufficient funding was being channeled into sustainability measures.
The company's planning dashboard helps PepsiCo analyze the cost per ton of emissions removed for a particular project and compare it to its financials. “When a financial institution comes in and looks at them and owns them, they can say, 'Okay, I have goals to accomplish in my business.' We have an annual operating plan. What do we do? ” said Andrew.
Publishing results encourages competition
Don't underestimate the power of sharing as much data as possible between departments, says Andrew. For example, one of the things PepsiCo closely tracks and shares is per-plant water efficiency, or how much water is consumed to produce one pound of food. is.
That transparency fosters healthy internal competition. “There’s not much to do other than release the information,” Andrew said. “Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the list, right? So you can continually level up.”
