PepsiCo Makes Recycling Easier for Plant’s Employees

To make recycling more convenient for plant employees, PepsiCo has partnered with the FCA US Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois, which builds Dodge and Jeep models.

Through the PepsiCo Recycling program, the company installed recycling bins in high-traffic areas throughout the Belvidere plant.

The materials collected in PepsiCo Recycling bins, including recyclables from Belvidere, will help support PepsiCo’s partnership with the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), which provides training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 veterans with disabilities. PepsiCo has donated $1.5 million to EBV since 2010.

Since launching the recycling program, PepsiCo says beverage container recycling rates have increased by 8 points, from 34 to 42 percent. The program has introduced thousands of new recycling solutions to high-traffic retail locations, colleges and universities, K-12 schools and other organizations across North America.

The Belvidere plant, which runs six days a week, employs about 4,500 people and has been putting “thousands of recyclable cans and bottles into trash containers destined for landfills each day,” says Michael Keefe, Belvidere’s environment lead. Keefe says the PepsiCo partnership aims to change this behavior and engage employees in recycling.

PepsiCo is also a founding member of the Closed Loop Fund, a recycling initiative working to develop recycling infrastructure and services to US consumers. Its goal is to provide 100 percent of US consumers with access to recycling where and when they need it.

PepsiCo is also working to increase its own internal recycling rates. According to the company’s latest sustainability report, in 2014 PepsiCo diverted 93 percent of its waste from reaching landfills, surpassing its goal of recycling and reusing 90 percent of its waste.