On May 22, PepsiCo, one of the world’s major plastic polluters, announced on its website that it will be eliminating its reusable packaging targets, while significantly dropping its goals to reduce virgin (new) plastic and recycled content. PepsiCo’s announcement follows a similar move made by top polluter Coca-Cola in December 2024.
In 2022, the PepsiCo company first publicly announced the goal of selling 20% of all its beverages through reusable systems by the year 2030. In 2023, PepsiCo reported that it had made only 10% of its packaging available in reusable formats, the same amount as when it set the goal back in 2022. The company says it now plans to track reusability under the umbrella term of “reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging,” and aims to extend this to 97% of its products by 2030, down from their original commitment of 100% by 2025.
Additionally, PepsiCo had previously set a goal of using 50% recycled content in its plastic packaging by 2030, which the company has now dropped to a minimum of 40% by 2035. In its new announcement, the PepsiCo company, which sells a wide array of foods and snacks in addition to numerous beverages, also slashed its goal of reducing the amount of new fossil-fuel based plastic it uses by 20% by 2030 down to a dismal 2% each year through 2030.
It is urgent and necessary that companies expand non-toxic reusable, plastic-free packaging and refill systems while eliminating plastic and other wasteful single-use packaging. As one of the world’s most egregious plastic polluters, PepsiCo is shifting its goalposts in the wrong direction. More plastic ‘recycling’ won’t help solve plastic pollution, nor will switching to single-use bioplastics: the answer is less plastic and less single-use of all kinds, not more.
When PepsiCo launched more than 100 years ago, its flagship beverage was initially sold in glass bottles filled locally and as syrups mixed on the spot at soda fountains. The company began using single-use aluminum cans in the 1950s and single-use plastic bottles in the 1970s. Similarly, its earliest foods and snacks were sold in cardboard and wax paper. PepsiCo knows how to eliminate plastic because it has already proven it can sell products in plastic-free packaging.
— Dianna Cohen, Co-Founder and CEO, Plastic Pollution Coalition
By fusing together its packaging categories of reusable, recyclable, and compostable under one umbrella, PepsiCo further obfuscates its performance establishing reuse packaging and systems. And like other giant corporations selling beverages, foods, and snacks, PepsiCo continues to emphasize the industry-friendly narrative of plastic’s potential to be recycled rather than its actual recyclability. In truth, plastic was never designed to be recycled, is rarely recycled, and when used in beverage packaging has been shown to increase the levels of hazardous chemicals in drinks.
What’s more, PepsiCo prefaces these “refined” commitments” with “forward-looking statements” subject to change. Which makes them little more than voluntary goals.
Break Free from Plastic Movement members Greenpeace and Oceana have also responded to PepsiCo’s latest announcement.
