I was thrilled to be at
#SuperBowlLX and see our sustainable packaging efforts in action throughout the week – from expanding our reusable cups pilot in the stadium to deploying AI recycling units to help fans reduce waste.
At Super Bowl Experience, the NFL’s weeklong fan festival in San Francisco leading up to gameday,
PepsiCo deployed Oscar Sort AI units as part of our collaboration with
Intuitive AI. Oscar Sort is an AI coach at the bin, helping fans identify the right place to put their discarded packaging to make recycling more effective and efficient. Fans simply hold their package up to Oscar’s camera over the bins and the AI tech identifies if it’s trash, recycling or compost, and tells the user where to put it. Oscar can also tell fans if they need to dump out leftover liquids or remove lids to help reduce contamination and it has a digital screen that gamifies the experience to help educate and engage consumers.
On gameday, we expanded the reusable cups pilot that we launched during the season with the
San Francisco 49ers to the big game itself. During the season, the program prevented more than 32,000 disposable plastic cups from ending up as waste in landfills, and at Super Bowl LX, fans seated in certain sections received their PepsiCo drinks in durable reusable cups. When they finished their drink they could simply return the cup to a nearby bin so the cups can be collected, cleaned and used again, thanks to support from
Bold Reuse and
Levy Restaurants. We also deployed more than 200 collapsible, reusable recycling bins across event spaces, and supported on-site sortation to help recover recyclables and food waste from the trash headed for the landfill.
Advancing packaging circularity is a complex challenge that requires widespread collaboration, investments, enabling policies and systemic shifts, but initiatives like these can demonstrate what it takes to drive progress. Sustainability is a team sport, and I’m incredibly proud and grateful to our teams who helped bring pep+ front and center and made sustainable packaging a significant part of this year’s
#SuperBowl story!
Anne Fink David Allen Burgess Scott Davis Emma Stradling Victoria Jani Kristina Gerken, MBA