Updated September 2026 — this page previously covered PepsiCo's 2016-era 2025 Sustainability Plan, which the company has since retired in favor of the pep+ strategy described below.
PepsiCo's sustainability framework isn't the 2025 Plan anymore. The company retired that products/planet/people structure in September 2021 for pep+ (PepsiCo Positive), an end-to-end strategy that puts sustainability at the center of how PepsiCo says it wants to grow. Five years in, the goals have been refined once and the company is now reporting real progress against 2030 targets.
What pep+ replaced
The old 2025 Plan, the one built on Indra Nooyi's Performance with Purpose framework, organized commitments into three buckets: products (reformulation), planet (water and emissions), and people (the PepsiCo Foundation's $100M commitment to women and girls). pep+ absorbed and extended that logic under CEO Ramon Laguarta and Chief Sustainability Officer Jim Andrew, reframing sustainability as core business strategy rather than a parallel CSR program.
The 2030 goals, refined in 2025
In May 2025, PepsiCo refined its climate, packaging, agriculture, and water targets under pep+. The headline changes:
Regenerative agriculture: expanded to 10 million acres of regenerative, restorative, or protective practices by 2030, up from a prior target, building on 3.5 million acres delivered through the end of 2024.
Climate: a published Climate Transition Plan aligning Scope 1, 2, and 3 targets to 1.5°C under Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) sectoral guidance, moving toward net-zero emissions by 2050.
Packaging and water: refined targets that PepsiCo says account for business growth and external realities since pep+ launched, rather than holding to the original 2021 numbers unchanged.
Where PepsiCo stands in 2026
PepsiCo's 2025 ESG Summary, released August 2026, reports real movement against those refined targets:
4.7 million acres under regenerative, restorative, or protective agricultural practices, tracking toward the 10-million-acre 2030 goal.
68% of beverage portfolio volume at 100 or fewer calories from added sugar per 12-oz serving, exceeding the prior 67% goal.
79% of convenient foods volume meeting both sodium and saturated fat targets, exceeding the 75% goals for each.
79 billion portions of diverse ingredients (whole grains, plant-based proteins, fruits and vegetables) delivered in 2025, against a 2030 goal of 145 billion portions annually.
~224,000 people supported across PepsiCo's agricultural livelihood programs.
Operational moves like 1,070 Ford E-Transit electric vans added to the delivery fleet in Mexico.
Deforestation-specific progress within the Positive Agriculture agenda is reported separately later in the year.
Why the refinement matters for sustainability communications
PepsiCo's own language on the 2025 refinement is instructive for any brand running a multi-year sustainability program: goals get revisited, not abandoned, when business growth or external conditions change the math. The company has been explicit that it reviews targets against SBTi's five-year revalidation cycle and reserves the right to recalibrate. That's a more durable communications posture than treating a sustainability plan as a one-time announcement — it lets PepsiCo report "refined" rather than "missed" when circumstances shift.
For competitors and category-watchers, PepsiCo's framework sits alongside Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan legacy, P&G's sustainability program, Coca-Cola's water and packaging commitments, and General Mills' agriculture goals, the CPG sector broadly has converged on the same pattern: multi-year frameworks, a small number of headline metrics, and annual progress reporting against a fixed baseline year.
pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) is PepsiCo's sustainability strategy, launched in September 2021, replacing the earlier Performance with Purpose/2025 Plan framework. It sets 2030 targets across agriculture, climate, packaging, water, and nutrition, treating sustainability as core business strategy rather than a separate program.
What happened to PepsiCo's 2025 Sustainability Plan?
It was superseded by pep+ in 2021. Some of its goals (like the beverage sugar-reduction target) carried forward into pep+'s reporting; the broader three-category products/planet/people structure was replaced by pep+'s agriculture, climate, packaging, water, and nutrition framework.
What are PepsiCo's current regenerative agriculture goals?
As of the May 2025 refinement, PepsiCo targets 10 million acres of regenerative, restorative, or protective agricultural practices by 2030. As of mid-2026, the company reports 4.7 million acres under those practices.
Is PepsiCo on track for net-zero emissions?
PepsiCo has published a Climate Transition Plan aligning its Scope 1, 2, and 3 targets to a 1.5°C pathway under SBTi sectoral guidance, targeting net-zero emissions by 2050. Progress is reported annually against a 2022 baseline.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
