Speaking to pn from new york about pepsico&rsquos sustainability agenda, denise lefebvre said that the firm wants its material to come &ldquofrom renewable materials and to reduce our reliance on oilbased plastic&rdquo. Pepsico&rsquos brands include pepsi, tropicana, copella, 7up and walkers crisps. In march, it announced that it will be developing a pet bottle made from 100 plantbased materials using nonfood sources.
She said that pepsico did not want to impact on food supplies, so would prefer to source agricultural byproducts from its food business for plastics feedstocks. Lefebvre said &ldquoevery package we touch is part of pepsico sustainability. It will always be better today than it was yesterday and we continue to look for ways to increase recycled content. &ldquothe number one importance is product protection and consumer fulfilment. &ldquoit is incumbent for manufacturers to look at new materials that drive forward sustainability.&rdquo she said pepsico wanted to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. &lsquonumber one priority&rsquo lefebvre said that packaging featured high on pepsico&rsquos sustainability agenda, describing it as the firm&rsquos &ldquonumber one priority&rdquo and saying she understood that it was an &ldquoemotional topic&rdquo for its customers.
Lefebvre reiterated the firm&rsquos commitment to lightweighting packaging, increasing recycled content in packaging, including cans and board, and helping to increase beverage can recycling rates. Pepsico plans to make its plantbased bottle from biobased raw materials, including switch grass, pine bark and corn husks. It is also working to expand sources for the raw materials to organic waste from its food businesses, including orange peels, potato peels, oat hulls and other agricultural byproducts. The pepsi bottle will first appear on the market in pilot production in 2012.
Lefebvre said that the bottle was a &ldquogloballybased proposition&rdquo and the firm had not yet decided where the test bottles will go. Raw material costs lefebvre said that raw material costs were impacting on the firm, as recently announced by pepsico&rsquos chairman indra noovi. She added &ldquobut price pack architecture balance between price and cost is important to the consumer &ndash they do not want to be out of pocket. We will always optimise price pack architecture.&rdquo &lsquoa journey&rsquo lefebrve explained &ldquosustainable packaging is a journey and i think that people will need to use creative ingenuity to create value for the consumer and company because conventional technologies are not going to drive this area forward for much longer. &ldquobiobased technology is vital. It is critical to find new ways to do that in a creative way that is more sustainable. The same old same old is not going to work.
