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Pepsi
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Category: Soda, Water, Juice, Energy, Tea, Sports Cost for 20 oz: $0.88 Greenopia Environment Achievement:
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Green Efforts: Pepsi has made some impressive strides, especially considering the size of the company. Pepsi has green offices (LEED Gold) and has made some of its production processes more efficient. Pepsi has redesigned its packaging to utilize less material and claims that the average Pepsi bottle has approximately 10% recycled content. Pepsi is also working with its suppliers to transport its containers as efficiently as possible. Also, according to the sustainability report data, Pepsi has made strides in production and now uses less water and energy to produce its products. Pepsi’s sustainability report is solid. It is both comprehensive and informative. Finally, Pepsi just launched its Pepsi Natural line which, as the name suggests, is made with only natural ingredients. Green Issues: Like other major beverage companies, Pepsi has been a part of numerous problems related to water usage and pollution. Pepsi has had numerous offenses in China and India and has been accused of draining aquifers where water is already scarce. Also Pepsi produces bottled water which is not only bad for the environment, but is less regulated than tap water. Another concern is a lack of data in their sustainability report showing how much energy or water it takes to produce 1 liter of a product. This number was available for the Gatorade line, but not for the company itself. We were also disappointed to see Pepsi no longer purchase RECs to offset all of its electricity consumption as it had done in past years. The EPA no longer lists Pepsi amongst the largest purchasers of renewable energy anymore. Ingredient Analysis: Pepsi is par for the course for a major soda company, which is to say it doesn’t perform well. Products contain substances such as caffeine, corn syrup, yellow 5, and benzoate compounds (which can be linked to benzene levels in beverages under certain conditions). With the exception of Benzene (which is highly toxic), the compounds are usually safe in moderation, but little is known about their long term effects. Greenopia Verdict: We are sad to see Pepsi drop the RECs from its environmental portfolio, but the company still has some solid initiatives. Environmental Violations: This company has been accused of environmental violations because of some of its production methods (typically water pollution and/or consumption). We did not capture these alleged violations in our scoring (because of the difficulty in comparing one violation to another), but encourage you to research the issues surrounding these accusations. We felt it was not fair to lower the score of companies who were making significant efforts because of events that may or may not have been beyond their immediate control. Having said that, we don't condone their actions, but this also should not completely erase the progress that they have made. Thus, we encourage you to find additional information to add to the quantifiable environmental data we have analyzed here. |
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