Approach

Understanding our progress against our sustainability agenda requires that we capture performance data across our global operations. This encompasses numerous metrics that are utilized and disclosed in varying ways, including data that is included in our annual sustainability report as well as data that is included in other reports and public statements. Our engagement activities have resulted in our receiving valuable feedback from our shareholders and other stakeholders who have provided important external viewpoints that inform our decisions and our strategy and enhance our public reporting.

Reporting our sustainability data externally informs our stakeholders about our performance, drives transparency, and enables us to accurately track our progress against achieving our goals and allows us to produce consistent, comparable, and reliable sustainability disclosures. We also recognize that this information is used by sustainability rating and ranking groups, investors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), customers, and consumers as part of their decision-making process in areas of purchasing, partnerships, and investments. Internally, we use performance data to inform our sustainability strategy and to prioritize investments and other actions that we believe will help us meet our sustainability goals. For all these reasons, we recognize that it is critically important that the data we provide is accurate and fulsome.

A dedicated team within PepsiCo’s Sustainability Office manages the data governance structure underpinning each of our sustainability goals, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and precision of the data, while driving accountability amongst our teams. This team works closely with partners across the company to gather information according to established methodology and governance. Targeted training helps to instill an understanding of the importance of following this process and ultimately delivering accurate sustainability data and reporting.

Progress

We regularly review and enhance our data management process to identify potential improvements and implement enhancements when appropriate to build on the strong foundation we already have in place.

Science-Based Targets

PepsiCo’s aim to set science-based targets underpins the new 2030 goals comprising our PepsiCo Positive ambitions. As the body of knowledge guiding environmental stewardship evolves, we expect to further refine our ambitions to make sure we continue to do our part. Our governance processes are poised to evolve in parallel, ensuring performance data undergoes the same rigorous vetting our stakeholders expect. 

Data Automation

With a vast and complex body of performance data, we maintain solutions to efficiently capture, consolidate, and validate data to measure performance against goals and meet numerous sustainability reporting requirements. We continue to invest in technical solutions to streamline and automate manual efforts to drive efficiency, improve visibility and enable meeting our sustainability targets. These investments, paired with our continued commitment to sound data governance, support our drive for continual improvement. In 2020, we launched an initiative to further accelerate these efforts.

Digitized Collaboration

We have also deployed a digitized platform enabling internal global collaboration for sustainability reporting. This simplifies reporting processes, delivers increased security and accessibility, and enhances our governance and certification documentation.

Framework Evaluation

As the corporate sustainability field evolves, so too does the array of frameworks that guide management and disclosure. Alignment with key stakeholder interests is a priority for PepsiCo’s suite of sustainability reporting, and as such, our Sustainability Office periodically evaluates developments, ensuring we continue to allocate resources and attention to those with the greatest impact. As a result of these assessments, we aligned our reporting with the Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) and the relevant SASB Food and Beverage Sector Standards in 2021.

What's Next?

Each year, PepsiCo’s Sustainability Office works with relevant executives and content specialists to review our data gathering processes and procedures and associated controls.

We continue to build capability to increase confidence in data across our value chain. This includes extending new tracking tools and methodologies to areas previously not measured. We believe this ongoing work is the critical foundation to driving confidence and continuing to enable more transparency in our reporting processes.

One example of how we're leveraging technology to improve our data integrity is through an automated controls framework to review, monitor, and evaluate some of our sustainability data to identify unexpected values and flag entries requiring further interrogation. By using technology to automate a formerly manual process, we are improving process efficiency, increasing data confidence, and significantly reducing the time required to review sustainability information. In 2021, we are expanding this framework to additional sustainability goals, thereby continuing to strengthen the rigor of our reporting.