PepsiCo’s Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice is the first consumer brand in North America to be independently certified by the Carbon Trust (www.carbontrust.co.uk). In late January, PepsiCo announced that it had formed a partnership with the Carbon Trust, a U.K. government-backed independent organization established to address climate change, to certify the carbon footprint of several of its products, beginning with the Tropicana brand.
“We are thrilled that PepsiCo has stepped forward as the first company to apply our rigorous standard in North America and that the company is committed to taking steps to reduce the carbon footprint of its products,” says Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust. “Everything we do or buy has a carbon impact, and establishing a globally recognized method of measurement is an important step in tackling climate change. PepsiCo is leading the way, and we hope that some of the other companies we are working with in the U.S. will soon follow its example.”
Working with The Earth Institute at Columbia University (www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu), PepsiCo calculated the life-cycle carbon footprint of its 64-oz container of Tropicana using the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050 guidelines. Certification of that footprint by the Carbon Trust gives PepsiCo a verifiable benchmark against which it can measure its greenhouse gas-reduction progress going forward.
Says Indra K. Nooyi, chairman and chief executive of PepsiCo, “PepsiCo’s partnership with the Carbon Trust is a significant step in our environmental sustainability journey. As part of our company-wide ‘Performance with Purpose’ initiative, we are committed to reducing our overall environmental impact. Understanding what contributes to the carbon footprint of our products is critical both to achieving our sustainability commitments and to driving efficiency gains across our global business.”
