PepsiCo Recycling Helps College Students Take Sustainability to the Next Level
College campuses are not just about education: they want to encourage students to make a difference. And PepsiCo wants to help make that happen.
According to PepsiCo, “Simple acts lead to a big impact.” The company, for the second year in a row, is assisting colleges and universities in reaching their environmental goals by giving students the chance to win up to $10,000 in funding to implement new sustainability initiatives or improve existing efforts in their communities.
The Zero Impact Fund (ZIF), which launched in August 2016, provides cash prizes for college and university sustainability projects related to energy, waste or water that aim to achieve long-term environmental, economic and social impacts.
PepsiCo Recycling supports students (with the help of a professor or school administrator), staff and faculty to submit their ideas for campus sustainability and zero impact initiatives. Application submissions are open now through December 19, 2017.
Proposals will be evaluated by a PepsiCo Recycling committee, which will consider factors such as environmental and social impact, longevity, ingenuity, desirability and feasibility.
In the past, ZIF has awarded cash prizes to eight schools chosen from more than 40 applications. Awarded proposals included campus bike share, composting and solar energy programs, interactive digital recycling signage, reusing items collected during the college spring move-out, and increasing compost use in the kitchens. The program is planning to significantly increase the amount of funding: up to 30 campuses may be funded, in next year’s competition.
So far, 100 campuses have partnered with PepsiCo on sustainability projects since 2010; 15,074,341 bottles and cans have been collected on campuses and universities. And more than $140,000 has been provided to college partners to support sustainability efforts.
Protecting the planet is a key pillar of PepsiCo’s “Performance with Purpose” agenda. PepsiCo Recycling is an initiative that brings this mission to life with the goal of helping increase the U.S. beverage-container recycling rate to a significantly higher level.
PepsiCo Recycling drives this impact by offering recycling programming and solutions for colleges and universities and K-12 schools, and by making recycling convenient and engaging entire communities.
For more information about how PepsiCo’s Zero Impact Fund can improve sustainability on college campuses,
