PBG Sidebar: The Economic Value of Being Green
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E-mailPepsi Bottling Group’s 96 production plants use billions of gallons of water a year, 53 percent of which ends up in beverages such as Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist — and not much can be done to change that. But 26 percent of its water is used in the production process, for tasks like cleaning fillers when a line is being changed to produce a different beverage. To the extent that PBG can tighten those processes, it can save on utility bills and be more sparing of the environment, says Victor Crawford, senior vice president of global operations and system transformation.
PBG has reduced its water use in several ways, says Crawford. One is by using ionized air instead of water to clean cans before filling them. The ionized air neutralizes the static charge that causes particles such as dust to cling to the inside of the cans. A second is by getting detergent manufacturers to change their formulas in ways that allow PBG to clean its production lines in three steps instead of five. By PBG’s reckoning, these practices and others, including recycling water at its Somers, N.Y., headquarters, allow the company to conserve approximately 300 million gallons of water a year.
Better water usage is part of a broader move toward environmental efficiency that has also led PBG to produce some of its own bottles (to cut down on fuel used in bottle delivery) and adopt lighter packaging (to reduce consumption of materials that form its plastic bottles). “These are environmentally friendly and economically wise things to do,” says Crawford. In 2007, PBG also began buying green energy certificates from Sterling Planet equal to 458 million kilowatt hours — enough to cover the company’s entire U.S. energy usage and earn it a Green Power Leadership award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Crawford says PBG’s use of renewable energy certificates, which the company continues to buy today, is good business at a time when “customers and consumers are becoming more environmentally sensitive.”
PBG isn’t shy about advocating environmental awareness. Last year it teamed with PepsiCo on a campaign to put recycling facts and messages on hundreds of millions of soda cans.
