Last Friday PepsiCo UK & Ireland unveiled environmental report for 2009/2010 outlining precise numbers on company’s efforts to prevent climate change, apply sustainable practices in agriculture as well as minimize its water and energy consumption.

2 years before, Pepsi presented an impressive ‘Path to Zero’ programme setting a number of challenging environmental goals for the next decade. Over this period of time, the company has shown a great progress and is truly on its ‘Path to Zero’—in terms of waste and energy consumption, of course.

Richard Evans, president of PepsiCo UK and Ireland said: «Two years into our commitments we are making real progress – we have reduced our total energy consumption by 7.3%, our landfill waste by 88% and our total water consumption by 14.6%,” said Richard Evans, president of PepsiCo UK and Ireland. “And, although our business has grown by over 15% in that time, our carbon footprint has fallen by 3.7%».

Below is the brief list of PepsiCo UK’s achievements to date:

Climate change and energy use. The company currently uses 4% of its energy and 17% of its electricity from renewable sources. It also took a courageous effort to reduce energy use by 20% per kg of production from 2010. According to the report, so far it has achieved 12.5% reduction.

Also, to reduce carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere, by now PepsiCo UK has replaced around 50% of its fleet with new low-emission and fuel efficient vehicles.

Sustainable water consumption. PepsiCO made an unbelievable pledge to minimize its water consumption to zero and disconnect its production facilities from the water grid by 2018. Last year, the experts of the company started to work on developing the technology to extract water contained in potatoes. Now the technology has been tested and is being implemented at the brand’s factories. By taking water saving measures and slightly reducing its production volume, PepsiCO UK managed to deliver a 7.6% decrease in overall water consumption compared to 2007.

Products. In the original version of the ‘Path to Zero’ plan, PepsiCo pledged to achieve zero landfill waste across their total supply chain by 2018. Here is the terrific news: nine of British PepsiCo’s manufacturing sites achieved zero waste to landfill during 2009, meaning that they reduced waste to landfill by a further 71% and 88% since they made a pledge.

Another key commitment is to make the packaging of the products 100% renewable, compostable and recyclable by 2018. At the moment Pepsi is testing several new packaging types, such as the FSC paper-based packaging on Red Sky crisps and researching renewable packaging for Walkers based on potato peelings.

Speaking of the future steps towards sustainability in course of ‘Path to Zero’ program, Evans said: “However, our journey on the ‘path to zero’ does not end here. We have set ourselves purposefully stretching targets to unplug from the water grid, become fossil fuel free, reduce packaging and landfill waste and increase our use of renewables. For me, the business case is clear: building sustainability into our corporate DNA cuts costs, drives innovation, reduces risk and motivates employees. My challenge over the next few years will be to truly embed sustainability into every aspect of our business.»

Download the full text of Environmental sustainability report 2009/10 ‘Path to zero’ from PepsiCo UK’s site to learn more details on the sustainability program by the global food industry giant.