Water success for PepsiCo

Drinks giant PepsiCo achieved its 2025 water efficiency target two years early in 2023 the company has announced. PepsiCo had committed to 25% improvement in water-use efficiency in areas of high water-risk by 2025 from a 2015 starting point. The company says that use of innovative technologies, and a process of sharing and scaling best practices across the business have contributed to the achievement. Scaling a new approach to how the company washes maize when making branded products such as Tostitos, Fritos and Doritos to 100 global manufacturing lines over a 12-month period has potential to save more than 640m litres of water every year. Another example the company gives is implementing membrane bioreactor technology at 21 manufacturing sites globally, including 14 in high water risk areas, to purify water used in manufacturing processes so that it can be reused in operations can reduce a site’s freshwater demand by an average of 70%. 

A final example of innovation is PepsiCo taking the water that’s naturally found in potatoes and using it to help run food manufacturing facilities. Implemented at sites in India, Mexico, Poland and Thailand, this technology captures and treats vapour that is released by potatoes when they are cooked to make snacks and converts it to drinkable water that is used to help run manufacturing facilities. This process can save a single site up to 60m litres of water per year.

There is a significant gap between the global generation of electronics waste and the capacity to recycle it, with the former growing perhaps as much as five times faster than the latter. This is according to the most recent edition of the UN’s Global E-waste monitor, which tracks global waste and recycling levels. The report says that 62m tonnes of e-waste was produced in 2022, which is 82% higher than when the data was first recorded in 2010. This increase is primarily down to higher rates of consumption and shorter product lifestyles, the UN says. 

There is some more positive news in that the recycling rates are increasing, up from 17.4% in 2019 to 22.3% in 2022. There are some stark geographical differences. The latest report points out that while recycling rates in Europe are greater than 40%, less that 1% of e-waste is recycled in Africa. The trend towards exporting waste continues – 10% of e-waste in 2022 was transported across borders or shipped elsewhere. As in the past this tends to be from the global north to south, with two-thirds exported from wealthier to poorer countries. Waste watchers point out that there is real economic value in much of the e-waste that is unrecycled – the UN says that the benefits from more investment in repair, reuse and recycling would easily cover any upfronts costs.  

At the most recent meeting of European Union agriculture ministers, most of them – 20 out of 27 – voted to support proposals by the Austrian minister to revise the EU’s deforestation regulation. Reports emerged that Austria wants to significantly reduce the deforestation certification burdens for companies and to postpone the deadline of 30th December 2024 for member states to be in compliance with the regulation. The argument is, essentially, that the new obligations place unreasonable burden on companies in Europe in the agriculture sector to prove that anything imported into the EU containing any of a number of key commodities must be deforestation free. 

Environmental campaigners have objected to the proposed watering down of the EUDR, with Mighty Earth and others calling on the European Commission to stand firm given the regulation was passed by the institutions of the EU in June 2023. Another factor influencing the jostling could well be the European parliamentary elections, coming up in June.  

The UK government has announced that it does not intend to extend an incoming ban on the sale of imported products linked to illegal deforestation in country of origin to products linked to deforestation that is technically legal. The House of Commons environmental audit committee had been pushing the relevant department – for environment, food and rural affairs – to extend the ban to cover products linked to all deforestation. Palm oil, cocoa, soy and cattle products are within scope of the rules. 

Concerns about the non-extension have been raised by stakeholders including business and environmental NGOs. The chair of the environmental audit committee, Philip Dunne MP, commented that UK businesses should not be trading in products linked to deforestation, as defined by the UN, if the UK is going to be in a position to provide leadership, with failing to prohibit such trade giving what he described as “mixed signals”. 

Since the Paris Agreement on climate in 2016 the 117 biggest emitting companies in the coal, gas and cement production sectors – referred to as the Carbon Majors – have in fact grown their carbon footprint in the years since according to new research from InfluenceMap. And a mere 57 of these companies are linked to 80% of the planet’s emissions since 2016. Of the Carbon Majors, 65% of the state-owned companies and 55% of the investor-owned companies had increased production in the period 2016-2022 compared with 2009-2015. 

The top five highest emitters were all state owned: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Coal India, the National Iranian Oil Company and Rosneft. The investor-owned fossil fuel giants were not far behind, with ExxonMobil and Shell both in the top ten. The trend for emission growth in Asian state fossil fuel sector is perhaps a standout finding – the International Energy Agency has warned that only no new fossil fuel expansion is compatible with keeping global temperature rises within the Paris agreement’s targets. 

The senate in the US state of Florida has passed a bill that bans local legislators from being able to pass laws requiring companies to provide water, shade and regular breaks to protect outdoor workers from heat exposure. These measures can mean the difference between workers being subject or not to significant health problems including kidney failure and even death. Anyone attending the recent Innovation Forum ethical sourcing conference in London may recall a presentation from La Isla Project and Diageo about research into how in-the-field interventions can make a huge difference to the health of agricultural workers in tropical agriculture. Florida farm worker groups are, unsurprisingly, very concerned at the legislation’s potential impact. 

There is some better news – an initiative titled the Fair Food Programme, which is a partnership involving retailers, farmers and farmworkers, has developed strong and reportedly legally binding heat protocols for Florida’s farms, bypassing the Republican-controlled state senate altogether. The programme originated in Florida’s tomato sector and expects to operate in 25 US states protecting farmworkers this year. It is supported by the US department of agriculture. Its heat protocol mandates shade on fields, water and a rest break every two hours in Florida’s fields from April to November, the state’s hottest months.