Cork 2023: Giving back to the community
With strong ties to the Cork region, PepsiCo has its eye on creating a substantial impact on people’s lives through its sustainability initiatives
When PepsiCo announced its completion of the country’s largest rooftop solar panel installation last month, it coincided with a significant milestone.
The announcement happened on the 20th anniversary of its Carrigaline facility opening and nearly 50 years after it first opened its Little Island facility in Cork in 1974. Then it was a 30-person operation in Little Island. Now, it employs more than 1,250 people across Ireland in Cork and Dublin communities.
Around the same period, it’s close to completing a €127m investment at its Little Island manufacturing facility, enhancing its manufacturing capacity and investing further in its R&D campus.
These announcements centre around the company’s sustainability initiatives. For its Carrigaline facility, the solar panels will provide 25% of the electricity required by the site and, during the summer months, will provide 100% of the site’s electricity needs.
It’s also piloting green biofuels, specifically Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO), which has 80 per cent less emissions than natural gas. Year to date, it’s “Consumed over 100,000 litres of HVO, saving 296 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Vincent Goggin, Carrigaline site lead and manufacturing director for PepsiCo.
“In May alone, we have reduced our natural gas usage by 78 per cent,” he said. “Building on the success of this pilot at our Carrigaline site, we plan to roll out to additional PepsiCo sites globally.”
Much of this ties in with its global sustainability programme PepsiCo Positive (pep+), its strategic end-to-end transformation of the organisation, which looks to operate within planetary boundaries and inspire positive change for both the planet and people.
It organises its pep+ actions under three pillars: Positive Agriculture, which is about changing how ingredients are sourced, Positive Value Chain, which focuses on how products are made and sold, and Positive Choices, which looks at how it inspires its people through brands and community.
Goggin mentions that under the Positive Choices pillar, its varied employee volunteer opportunities build a sense of community amongst employees; strengthening friendships and developing trust in turn helping create a more enjoyable workplace.
“Our colleagues know that we are serious about our pep+ transformation strategy as they get involved in the many activities under this umbrella,” he said.
“We place huge importance on our active role within the communities in which we operate and where our employees live. We want to make a positive impact by giving back to those communities.
“Not only do we partner with those in our local communities where we operate, but many of the community organisations we partner with also tie in with our pep+ agenda. We have chosen many of our charity partners by listening to employee feedback to ensure we provide opportunities that mean something to them.”
Some of the charities and initiatives include Field of Dreams, which works with Down Syndrome Ireland to prepare and provide work experience opportunities for young adults within their community, the Men’s Shed, which offers activity, a social outlet and friendships for retired males in the community, and the local Tidy Towns.
“The involvement and giving back allows our employees make a difference to something within their communities as well as instilling a sense of pride. There are many varied volunteer opportunities offered to employees across our Cork sites.”
The strength of a programme like pep+ is that it caters to region and area-specific initiatives, ensuring that its people give time to causes that matter to them. For example, the Little Island team have hosted Plants and Seeds Days for the last two years – whereby PepsiCo purchased flowers from The Cope Foundation in Montenotte – and gift flowers to all staff – to encourage home growing of flowers and vegetables for all.
In 2022, it held two Green CSR activities in Cobh – where it took 74 people to the beach for a clean-up – and the other in Little Island National School, where a garden clean-up and fence-building activities were completed, as well as the Carrigaline Tidy Towns clean-up where over 100 employees participated.
Sometimes that generosity extends beyond boundaries, with a recent example being people from one of its other Cork locations signing up to do a clean-up at Garryvoe Beach. PepsiCo’s employee resource groups (ERGs) also provide opportunities for passionate colleagues who can become actively involved in their chosen group.
“We’re proud to be part of a multicultural business comprising of people from every walk of life and every part of the world. We invest heavily in our people via ongoing professional development, career coaching, leading-edge experiences and reflecting society’s diversity amongst our teams.
“We encourage the next generation via STEM, graduate programs, iWISH and Million Women Mentors, leveraging our more experienced employees as coaches and mentors,” said Goggin.
