Water in our supply chain
We know that where we source our water from is critical, and are committed to helping suppliers reduce their water footprint and avoiding water conflict with local communities.
Using less water in our supply chain
PepsiCo provides guidelines to suppliers and growers on environmental management, including their water management practices. The majority of our oats and potato growers are in regions of the UK that have historically suffered only limited water stress. During 2008 we will extend our relationships with our supply base, especially within the agricultural sector.
We will continue to develop practical indicators and guidelines for minimising agricultural use of water, and for reducing the impact of agricultural inputs on water quality.
For Tropicana we estimate that the vast majority of our water footprint, 99.74%, occurs in the growing of the oranges in Brazil. 98.5% of the water used to grow our oranges comes from rainfall, with only 1.5% from irrigation diverted from rivers. Around 0.21% of the total water use occurs during the production of the packaging and less than 0.05% during bottling.
Figure 17: Tropicana water footprint
Our orange juice supplier uses waste water to irrigate a sustainable palm tree plantation of four million trees next to their orange-juicing factory. When making Copella apple juice, we estimate 47% of the water footprint is used to irrigate the apple orchards.
Investing in water research
We have partnered with the Scottish Crop Research Institute to investigate new potato varieties that would require less water. We are investing in new research into irrigation optimisation. The project aims to compare the effectiveness between various agricultural irrigation systems aimed at managing and conserving water resources from surface and borehole sources.
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