Frito-Lay is a wholly-owned subsidiary of PepsiCo, Inc. In addition to Frito-Lay, PepsiCo’s principal businesses include Pepsi-Cola beverages, Gatorade sports drinks, Tropicana juices and Quaker foods.
Our Mission
In order to make the best snacks on earth, we need to protect the earth. So we’ve committed to reducing the environmental impact in four ways: conserving energy, saving water, minimizing waste, reducing emissions.
Conserving Energy
How do you make a great-tasting snack without taking a bite out of the earth's natural resources? Last year, our Green Teams helped reduce the electricity used to make each bag of snacks by 22% (compared with 1999 levels).That's enough energy to power over 15,000 homes for a year. And we're only getting started.
Chips that are better for the environment? We believe it's possible.
Snacks Made with the Help of the Sun
Back in 1999, Frito-Lay made an ambitious commitment to save energy and lower our impact on the environment. One of the most exciting initiatives to come from that commitment was the field of solar collectors recently installed at our facility at Modesto, California, where we make SunChips® and other snacks.
Since 2008, our Modesto plant has been harnessing the power of the sun to help SunChips® live up to its name.
Over 54,000 square feet of concave mirrors make up the 192 solar collectors that help reduce the amount of natural gas used at the plant, which means we're avoiding more than 1.7 million pounds of CO2 emissions every year, while producing more than 145,000 bags of SunChips® every day.
We're avoiding more than 1.7 million pounds of CO2 emissions every year.
How does it work? The solar collectors track the sun throughout the day, heating the water in the pipes that run across the diameter of the mirrors up to 450º F and producing steam. We then use this solar-generated steam to help cook SunChips® thereby eliminating the need to use natural gas. Since Modesto, California, is one of the sunniest places in America, scoring an amazing 306 sunny days in 2007, we’ll keep the SunChips® snacks coming!
And since we are so committed to reducing our need to use non-renewable energy sources, we have distribution centers in Arizona, California, New York and Texas that are all going solar, and, at our headquarters in Plano, Texas, we recently installed solar hot water heaters as part of our mission to achieve LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council by summer 2009.
Using the sun to help make SunChips® and other great snacks? It seems only natural.
Saving Water
We started thinking about water a long time ago. In 2007, we used 1 billion gallons less water to make potato chips than we did in 1999. One of the ways we managed this was by capturing and purifying the water we use to wash the potatoes that make our chips.
Making the water we use work harder is one more way we are working to reduce our impact on the environment.
Minimizing Waste
At Frito-Lay, we strive to put the 3 R's into action. We want to dramatically reduce the amount of waste we create, as soon as possible, through a policy of Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling.
One big example of how we're implementing the three R's is our efforts with shipping cartons. By reusing our cartons five or six times each, we're using 120,000 tons less paperboard a year. Once the cartons are no longer usable, they are recycled.
We're also innovating packaging and processes to further reduce waste. Look for more exciting packaging developments to come in the near future.
Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Three ways we’re working toward a brighter future.
Making a Better Bag
"There are two problems with our packaging today: the empty bags sometimes wind up as litter, and the bags themselves are produced from non-renewable materials,” says Tony Knoerzer, Frito-Lay's Director of Sustainable Packaging. Fortunately, Tony and his team are working on innovative solutions to both problems.
The first step to reducing the impact of our packaging is to simply use less. That’s why over the past five years we've eliminated five billion square inches of packaging by reducing the materials we use by 10%. We have also developed advanced packaging techniques that have improved the shelf life of our snacks, meaning that our snacks stay fresher longer, with fewer out of date products being discarded, preventing another five million pounds of waste from going into our nation's landfills.
But we’re not stopping there. We're working on new solutions to turn plants into plastics so we can use less non-renewable materials and offer additional disposal options. You will hear more from us in 2009 regarding our latest packaging innovations.
