Dr Pepper Donates $300,000 for Recycling Bins

Dr Pepper Snapple Group has donated $300,000 to Keep America Beautiful to put recycling bins in public parks.

The Public Park Recycling Grant program is part of a one-year collaboration between the two organizations intended to increase recycling in city, regional and state parks across the US.

Grant applications are available online through April 26. The program is open to governments or organizations that help maintain and/or support public state, regional and city parks.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group says the partnership with the nonprofit is part of its ongoing commitment to environmental sustainability. By 2015, the company plans to cut water use and wastewater discharge 10 percent per gallon of finished product, compared to 2009 levels. It also says it will improve energy efficiency in manufacturing operations by 10 percent per gallon of finished product above 2009 levels, and increase product shipments per gallon of fuel used by 20 percent by 2015.

Earlier this month, the company installed a BioViper biological pretreatment system from wastewater treatment systems provider Baswood Corporation at its Houston bottling plant. Basewood says the energy-efficient system will significantly lower the biochemical oxygen demand in the bottling plant’s effluent.

In August 2012, Dr Pepper Snapple Group pledged $1 million over the next four years to protect Texas watersheds that provide water for its bottling plants.

Last September, Dr Pepper Snapple Group was one of seven companies dropped from the FTSE4Good Index for not meeting environmental management criteria. The same month, Alcoa and the Alcoa Foundation announced they would invest $2 million to help fund a national initiative with Keep America Beautiful aimed at increasing the US recycling rate of aluminum, plastic, glass and paper to 75 percent by 2015.