“Not Just Another Initiative”: How PepsiCo Combines Innovation and Sustainability

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Image: Pepsi Co

Sustainability may not be the first thing you think of when you open a can of cold soda, but Athina Kanioura, chief strategy and transformation officer at PepsiCo, says a desire to create a positive environmental impact is at the heart of her company’s approach .

Whether it’s using AI to prevent water leaks in factories, develop bio-based thermoplastics for product displays, or use tailored data platforms to meet regulatory requirements, PepsiCo is working hard to ensure products that it sells are produced, shipped and sold in the sustainable way possible.

“It’s an integral part of the business for us,” he says. “It’s about how we can create a positive environment, whether it’s for the food value chain, the communities we serve, or the people who make and buy our products.”

PepsiCo’s sustainability efforts are known as pep+ (PepsiCo Positive), which President and CEO Ramon Laguarta has described as “the future of the company” and a fundamental transformation of what the company does and how.

Also: Technology for a sustainable future: future challenges and opportunities

Kanioura says technology plays a key role in helping the company make this change, and his organization looks at sustainability through several lenses.

One is the portfolio, which covers the products the company creates, whether it’s cans of soda or packets of potato chips. Another lens focuses on packaging and the transition from plastic to biodegradable materials. Finally, there is significant effort in agriculture and climate change, particularly when it comes to meeting goals and driving innovation.

PepsiCo employs approximately 250,000 people worldwide and develops a range of data-driven technologies in-house, particularly to ensure compliance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) regulations.

However, the company also recognizes that innovation is a team sport and works with outside organizations to develop innovative solutions to intractable sustainability challenges.

Athina Kanioura says sustainability is an integral part of PepsiCo.

Image: Pepsi Co

“For different capacities, we have partners,” Kanioura says. “Let’s address a specific problem we have in this space with a tech startup or an established company.”

The work with startups is led by David Schwartz, VP of PepsiCo Labs, which is a team of specialists under the leadership of Kanioura and is tasked with leveraging innovation.

Schwatrz explained to ZDNET last year how the lab — which has so far scaled more than 30 startups in more than 200 countries — is working on a range of products that are helping PepsiCo meet its sustainability goals.

Examples include a partnership with technology company WINT, which is using artificial intelligence to prevent water leaks at PepsiCo factories – estimates suggest the system can reduce annual water usage by up to 25%.

In Turkey, PepsiCo is partnering with Pulse Industrial and BrenPower to monitor and detect failures of steam traps at the company’s plants through an artificial intelligence system.

PepsiCo is also partnering with UBQ Materials to transform unsorted household waste, including organic materials and non-recyclable plastics, into a bio-based thermoplastic that can be used in product displays.

Schwatrz says the goal is to bring these innovations in-house and produce environmentally beneficial results in the most effective way possible.

“We are a large company with a significant infrastructure,” he says. “We want to make sure the solution integrates seamlessly into the PepsiCo system.”

In all of these pioneering areas, Kanioura says it is vital to recognize that achieving positive results for the environment is much more than a pleasure.

Plus: PepsiCo is working with startups to tap into new sources of innovation. Here’s how it does it

Emphasizes the need to ensure that ESG factors are considered in all investment analyzes and business decisions.

PepsiCo already reports ESG indicators in “hundreds and hundreds of KPIs,” says Kanioura.

Kanioura says the company has created a bespoke database that aims to create a consolidated platform for the information held by the company and that represents a radical change from what can sometimes happen in other large companies.

“Data is traditionally held anywhere: it may be in spreadsheets, some of it may be held in the fleet department, some of it may be held in a different system in the agricultural team or a factory, and some of it may be held on a large platform” , He says.

“If we can have a single data base for sustainability, then it’s very easy to report KPIs consistently. It becomes much easier to incorporate sustainability as a key factor and metric into every program we do.”

Kanioura gives one example: The company manages integrated business planning, where it makes decisions about its goals for the next three years.

One of these decisions could include product launches, which will only be successful if the company can consider all variations in sustainability as part of the launch process.

“Unless you embed sustainability KPIs into every part of the process at PepsiCo, you’ll never be able to make the change,” he says.

The goal now, says Kanioura, is to continue to refine the approach and ensure that the technology systems provided by his team, whether they are bespoke developments or created in collaboration with external innovators, make it easier to place sustainability at the heart of every decision. corporate.

“We need to think about all the key areas of our business and then consider how we embed sustainability KPIs into every single program, from the source, which is what we call ‘making’ part of our business, transferring part of our business — we have the largest fleet in North America — and consumer sales,” he says.

“The one thing I want to stress above all else is that sustainability is an integral part of this company’s strategy. It’s not just another initiative.”

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