World Water Week: How PepsiCo Foods North America is conserving water and driving change

World Water Week kicks off August 25-29. The team at PepsiCo Foods North America understands water is both a precious resource and necessary for their business from growing crops, manufacturing and even as an ingredient. 

Melissa Jones, the Water Program Leader at PepsiCo Foods North America, has turned her passion into a career. She first joined PepsiCo within the marketing department, but quickly found her passion in sustainability. She helped to create the Green Team at Frito-Lay’s corporate headquarters in Plano, Texas and ultimately was able to transition her career into a focus on sustainability. 

Today, Melissa helps the PFNA team continue to conserve water through three main areas of focus: people, processes, and technologies, aiming to advance PepsiCo’s goal to become Net Water Positive by 2030. Similar to World Water Week’s theme centered on water cooperation, PFNA’s approach to conservation also focuses on collaboration and partnership, participating in the Alliance for Water Stewardship to promote stewardship of local water resources and working with groups like Arbor Day Foundation and Trout Unlimited to replenish local watersheds. 

Last year, PepsiCo Beverages and Frito-Lay committed USD 3.3M towards water replenishment projects, including restoring wetlands in Florida and providing critical freshwater to valuable ecosystems and wildlife in Texas. Additional projects include reestablishing connectivity between two segments of the Colorado River through a mile-long channel and planting two million trees across 8,000 acres devastated by wildfires in the San Joaquin Valley in California. 

Examples of how PFNA is reducing the water needed to prepare your favorite snacks through technology include:

• Scaling a new process to cook the corn used to make food products such as Tostitos, Fritos and Doritos that uses up to 70% less water.
• By developing a custom technology to capture and recirculate the water used when slicing potatoes that ultimately become snacks like Lay’s and Ruffles.
• What’s next? PFNA is also working on adding technology to recapture the water already in potatoes. A potato is naturally made up of 80% water. This technology captures the steam released during the cooking process to be reused in the production process.