USA – Multinational soft beverage giant, PepsiCo has unveiled new sustainability target seeking to reduce 35% of virgin plastic content across its beverage portfolio by 2025.

To achieve this, the company said it will be working towards increasing use of recycled content and alternative packaging materials for its beverage brands, including LIFEWTR, bubbly and Aquafina.

PepsiCo hopes to expand its SodaStream business to drive the avoidance of 67 billion single-use plastic bottles over next five years, furthering the company’s progress in reusable packaging.

These targets advance PepsiCo’s sustainable packaging vision and reinforce its “Beyond the Bottle” strategy.

As part of the initiative, the company launched the mobile-enabled Hydration Platform and other offerings that deliver beverages without single-use plastic bottles.

The platform has seen the beverage company introduce its LIFEWTR brand packaged in 100% rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate), eliminate plastic bottles from its bubly brand and introduce aluminum can packaging for its Aquafina brand.

“While our efforts are far from done, this is one more step in PepsiCo’s journey toward helping to build a world where plastics need never become waste,” said PepsiCo Chairman and CEO, Ramon Laguarta.

“Even as we work to accelerate business growth, we continue to make important progress toward a circular economy for packaging, a responsibility we take very seriously.”

PepsiCo’s sustainable plastics vision is rooted in three pillars: Reducing the amount of plastics used, Boosting recycling rates, and Reinventing plastic packaging. 

“We’re intentionally setting ambitious goals to drive meaningful progress,” said Simon Lowden, President, PepsiCo Global Foods, who leads PepsiCo’s Plastic Agenda.

“PepsiCo is already one of the world’s largest buyers of recycled plastic, and if there was more available, we’d buy it – and if there were more markets where we could use it, we would. We are committed, and partnership is key.”

These targets builds upon the company’s already announced packaging goals to; make 100% of its packaging recyclable, compostable, or biodegradable; and increase its use of recycled content in plastics packaging to 25% by 2025.

PepsiCo said that the new targets are based off a 2018 baseline. In 2018, the company’s total virgin plastic volume use was 2.2 million metric tons.