PepsiCo, Inc. today announced that it has priced the company’s first ever green bond. The net proceeds from the $1 billion green bond offering will fund a series of key initiatives to advance PepsiCo’s sustainability agenda.
The company also announced that it has named PepsiCo leader Simon Lowden as its first chief sustainability officer. In this new role, effective immediately, Lowden will be responsible for leading PepsiCo’s Sustainability Office, including the Global Sustainable Plastics team and Global Sustainable Operations team.
In September, PepsiCo released its 2018 Sustainability Report, which outlined six priority areas where the company believes it can make the best contribution — agriculture, water, packaging, products, climate, and people — along with eight measurable goals. The following eligible categories for the use of the Green Bonds net proceeds are aligned with these priorities and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
Earlier this month, Frito-Lay — a division of PepsiCo, Inc. — announced it aims to replace all of its existing diesel-powered freight equipment with zero-emission (ZE) and near-zero emission (NZE) technologies at its Modesto, California manufacturing site. The project will transform the 500,000-square-foot site — one of Frito-Lay’s largest in the US — into an area for environmentally sustainable manufacturing, warehousing and distribution.