PepsiCo beach clean-up drives women’s enterprises, plastics recycling

There are always three benefits whenever volunteers from foods and beverages company PepsiCo Philippines clean up a beach: waste are removed, women micro-entrepreneurs earn and plastic disposables are recycled.

The 114 kilos of plastic waste collected by the volunteers at the Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park on Earth Day were given to an Aling Tindera member who sold it to a plastic processor for recycling into a new product or use as an alternative energy.

Aling Tindera is a waste-to-cash program of PepsiCo partner HOPE which forwards trash to processors.

Aling Tindera runs 91 plastic waste collection sites in Cebu Province, Batangas, Cavite, Bulacan, Laguna and Pasig. PepsiCo Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of PepsiCo Philippines, sponsors 15 additional plastic waste drop-off sites.

PepsiCo Philippines and Aling Tindera have collected nearly 3 million kilos of plastic waste between 2020 and 2023 while the foundation’s 15 sites collected and turned over 212,144 kilos during the same period.

The initiative has not only spurred a circular economy but also raised the monthly income of Aling Tindera women entrepreneurs by an impressive 48 percent.

PepsiCo Philippines’ involvement in the plastic waste-to-cash program is aligned with the company’s pep+ agenda, a strategic transformation that places sustainability at the center of its growth and value creation.

“The Aling Tindera program underscores the potential of the circular economy to deliver tangible environmental and economic benefits by creating an ecosystem to collect plastic waste and enhance the livelihoods of the communities we serve. This is the kind of progress that defines PepsiCo’s path forward,” said Nitin Bhandari, general manager at PepsiCo Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.

Beyond plastic collection and community programs like Aling Tindera, PepsiCo in the Philippines has embarked on efforts to reduce the amount of virgin plastic through packaging that is recyclable, compostable, biodegradable and/or reusable (RCBR). PepsiCo globally has a target of attaining 100 percent RCBR across all its packaging by 2025.