PepsiCo Sets Its Sights on Being Net Water Positive by 2030

PURCHASE, N.Y. — As part of its pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) initiative, PepsiCo Inc. announced several new innovations, investments and partnerships in an effort to be Net Water Positive by 2030, aiming to replenish more water than the company uses.

These efforts include developing a new technology to recover more than half of the water used in its potato chip manufacturing, investing nearly $2 million for the Colorado River Basin, extending safe water access to eight million more people in 2021 and more.

"PepsiCo has just nine years to reach our ambitious 2030 Net Water Positive goals, so there is no time to waste," said Jim Andrew, chief sustainability officer at PepsiCo. "We're taking a look at our full value chain, from top to bottom, and asking, how can we leverage the innovation and creativity that exists within our company to ensure that the water resources PepsiCo uses are better off a decade from now than they are today?"

Since the company's Net Water Positive announcement in August 2021, more than a dozen new programs have been created to advance the company's water-use efficiency, replenishment and safe water access efforts. PepsiCo's Global Research & Development team has successfully proven a method for condensing and treating the steam evaporated from its fryers to recover more than half of the water used in potato chip manufacturing lines. The energy recovered from the condensation can also be used for other manufacturing purposes, added the company.

PepsiCo has fully implemented this technology at its facility in Kolkata, India, where the proof-of-concept showed the approach could save more than 60 million liters of water a year. During the next seven years, the technology is expected to be adopted at nearly 30 potato chip manufacturing plants in high-water-risk areas.  

PepsiCo also took aim at the the American West. The Colorado River Basin is now among the world's most water-stressed regions. To help advance its Net Water Positive goals in this critical watershed, PepsiCo has invested nearly $2 million in two innovative partnerships.

PepsiCo's North American businesses are partnering with the nonprofit organization Trout Unlimited to reestablish connectivity between two segments of the Colorado River that have been blocked by the Windy Gap Reservoir near Denver. By constructing a mile-long channel to bypass the Windy Gap Reservoir, the initiative is expected to restore perennial flows throughout the river, create 18 acres of new wetlands, restore 50 acres of riverside habitat and replenish approximately 380 million gallons of water per year.

PepsiCo is also making a founding investment in the Colorado River Basin Fund, a $5 million "future of water" venture capital fund focused on incubating technology solutions to address water scarcity in this critical watershed. The fund will invest in startups addressing water scarcity, quality and equitable access through technologies that help with things like leak detection in smart homes, real-time water quantity and quality monitoring in business-dependent watersheds, and next-generation water recycling and alternative sources.

In addition, in 2021, the PepsiCo Foundation expanded the reach of its safe water access program by an additional eight million people. Since the effort began in 2006, the company has helped provide safe water access to approximately 68 million people, with a goal of reaching 100 million by 2030. To continue to advance this goal, the foundation is granting $1.5 million over three years to two new water stewardship programs in Latin America and Nigeria. 

"For large portions of these regions, access to safely managed water and sanitation services is a major challenge," said C.D. Glin, vice president, the PepsiCo Foundation and Global Head of Philanthropy at PepsiCo. "We are focusing our efforts in areas that are absolutely vital to public health, economic development and climate resiliency."

Purchase-based PepsiCo generated more than $79 billion in net revenue in 2021, driven by a complementary beverages and convenient foods portfolio that includes Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker and SodaStream.