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The Global Clean Water Crisis -- PepsiCo Expands Its Safe Water Program

This article is more than 5 years old.

WaterAid/James McCauley

People want to drink clean water even more than they want to breath clean air.

So it’s a good thing that almost 3 billion people have gained access to clean water over the last 25 years. But current water use, population growth and the effects of climate change have caused two-thirds of the global population – about 4 billion people – to live under conditions of severe water scarcity at least one month of the year. Some of this scarcity has led to violence and conflict, especially in Africa, Southern Asia and the Middle East.

The Syrian conflict was triggered by a years-long drought.

Almost 300,000 children under the age of five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by dirty water. That's almost 800 children a day, or one child every two minutes.

By 2050, global demand for water will increase by as much as 50%, mostly in developing countries in Asia and Africa. At the same time, food production will need to increase by 70% to feed a growing and more prosperous population that will top 10 billion.

America, too, is struggling with clean water issues, especially with our inability to address the degrading infrastructures that support drinking water, sewer, energy and wastewater treatment.

More than two-third of the world’s largest businesses face water risk, according to a 2015 report by CDP. But the World Health Organization says that for every $1 invested in water and toilets, there is a $4 return in increased productivity. So it is in business’s self-interest to address this issue.

In the wake of the horrible state-inflicted water crisis in Flint, Michigan and continued attempts to repeal many Obama-era EPA regulations on air and water, corporations have decided to increase their role in supporting environmental efforts to assure safe drinking water.

Procter & Gamble’s non-profit Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program partnered with National Geographic to raise awareness about the global water crisis and provide inexpensive solutions for safe water to developing nations. Last year, Nestlé released their ‘Perspectives on America’s Water’ Study that provided some eye-opening results on what we as Americans think about this issue.

The latest company to increase their role is also one of the biggest. PepsiCo is expanding its program of global sustainability to provide access to safe drinking water to nearly 16 million people in some of the world’s most water-stressed areas, well on its way to meet their goal of 25 million people by 2025.

‘At PepsiCo, we believe water is a fundamental human right and that access to safe water is one of the most urgent global challenges,’ said Roberta Barbieri, PepsiCo Vice President of Global Sustainability. ‘As part of our Performance with Purpose agenda, we have created a holistic global water strategy. Our efforts are designed to enable long-term, sustainable water security for our business and others who depend on water availability. Our work to provide safe water access in the world's most at-water-risk areas is a key part of this strategy.’

Partnering with NGOs like the Safe Water Network, Water.org, WaterAid, China Women’s Development Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, Nature Conservancy and the 2030 Water Resources Group of the World Bank, PepsiCo is trying to help communities effectively conserve, manage, and distribute water across the United States, Latin America, China and India through strategic grants, now totaling over $40 million, and through employee volunteering and community service.

WaterAid/Poulomi Basu

Last month, PepsiCo granted $4.2 million to WaterAid and a $2 million grant to the China Women’s Development Foundation’s ‘Water Cellars for Mothers’ initiative to provide access to safe water to more than 10 million people near the Danjiangkou Water Reservoir where small water sources are often contaminated.

PepsiCo has worked with the Nature Conservancy to protect several watersheds in America, including Arizona’s Verde Valley. Last year, PepsiCo’s support provided over a million gallons of water to be replenished in the Verde River. At the same time, the company scaled up their water recharge projects in India, creating a total recharge potential of more than a billion gallons across seven states impacting more than 60,000 people.

A Fortune 500 company, PepsiCo products like Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker, and Tropicana are used by over a billion people each day in more than 200 countries, generating over $60 billion in revenue each year. The company believes that their success is inextricably linked to the sustainability of the world at large.

All of this is captured in PepsiCo’s Sustainability Report, released this morning. The company’s CEO, Indra Nooyi, puts it this way, ‘Our aspiration of creating a good company — good ethically and good commercially — is now coming to fruition, yielding a broader, more lasting impact than we could have ever imagined. We’ve earned the prestigious Stockholm Industry Water Award, became the first company to voluntarily remove trans fats from our products, have been transitioning to an all-electric delivery fleet, developed the first 100% compostable chip bag, and have reduced our waste to landfill by 95% through reuse, recycling or waste-to-energy.’

In sustainability, PepsiCo is working towards having 100% their farming suppliers meet the standards of their Sustainable Farming Program (79% do now), and has vowed to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2030. And 85% of their packaging worldwide is recyclable, compostable or biodegradable.

Not bad for a company that has outperformed the S&P 500 by double digits for the last 20 years.

While it is strange to think of large companies taking on many of the roles we consider the job of governments, like protecting the environment and providing people with basic needs like clean water, the more companies that do, the better the world will be.

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