Bottler Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines Inc. reported having collected 2,944 tons of plastic waste since 2020 from rivers and beaches all over the country.
The soft drinks maker recently led a beach clean-up at the Las Piñas-Paranaque Wetland Park that marked the deployment of over 90 plastic waste collection sites in Cebu, Batangas, Cavite, Bulacan, Laguna and Pasig.
The project operates as a waste-to-cash program called Aling Tindera that supports women micro-entrepreneurs to become sustainability champions in their communities.
With the program supported by Pepsi-Cola Philippines, the 76 Aling Tindera helps spur a circular economy and raised the monthly income of women entrepreneurs by nearly 50 percent.
As part of their Earth Day initiatives, Pepsi Cola partnered with HOPE selling bottled water the proceeds from which goes to the building of public school classrooms across the Philippines.
Pepsi Cola collected 114 kilogram of plastic waste and donated it to the program which has a branch in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite.
The Aling Tindera project kicked off in 2020 in Metro Manila to commemorate the 76th year of Pepsi Cola in the Philippines and expanded to 76 community collection sites nationwide in 2022.
The program covers 56 community sites managed by women and 20 institutional drop-off sites, including malls and resorts.
There are now 91 active collection points across the nation. The program creates value by purchasing plastic waste from the surrounding communities, later acquired by HOPE at a premium.
Pepsi Cola Philippines took a proactive and voluntary move even before the Extended Producer Responsibility Law, which holds companies accountable for the plastic packaging they produce throughout the lifecycle of their products, was established in 2022.
“We proactively launched this initiative ahead of the EPR Law, setting the stage for innovative, sustainable solutions. 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,” Nitin Bhandari, general manager of Pepsi Cola Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, said.
Pepsi Cola Philippines commits to reduce the amount of virgin plastic and promote a circular economy through packaging that is recyclable, compostable, biodegradable and/or reusable (RCBR).
Pepsi Cola targets attaining 100 percent RCBR across all its packaging by 2025.
