PepsiCo Dream Machine Recycle Rally™ Launches 2012/2013 Contests and Continues to Inspire K-12 Students to Recycle

For the third consecutive school year, the Dream Machine Recycle Rally helps raise awareness among students about the importance of recycling

Participating K-12 schools can earn rewards and compete for prizes when students collect non-alcoholic beverage containers

News provided by

PepsiCo

Sep 12, 2012, 12:15 ET

PURCHASE, N.Y., Sept. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) announced today the official start of the Dream Machine Recycle Rally contests for the 2012/2013 school year. Now in its third year, the Dream Machine Recycle Rally is a national program that aims to encourage students, grades K-12, to make recycling a part of their everyday lives and offers participating schools the chance to earn rewards and compete for contest prizes.

To learn more about the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, view a video overview of the program at http://multimedia.pepsico.com/public/asset_id/2111.

Since the Dream Machine Recycle Rally launched in 2010, more than 500,000 students in approximately 900 schools in 34 states nationwide have made a tremendous environmental impact, recycling an estimated 25 million containers through the program to date, and challenging their families, friends, and communities to join their efforts.

The Dream Machine Recycle Rally is part of the broader Dream Machine Recycling Initiative – a multi-year collaboration between PepsiCo, Waste Management and Keep America Beautiful. With the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative, PepsiCo aims to create strategic partnerships to help increase the U.S. beverage container recycling rate to 50 percent by 2018, by providing greater on-the-go access to recycling receptacles. The Dream Machine Recycle Rally and the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative are aligned with PepsiCo's global environmental goals, among them to reduce packaging weight, and to use rPET and renewable sources in packaging.

As part of the Dream Machine Recycle Rally program, participating schools earn points for every non-alcoholic aluminum can or plastic bottle collected through the program, and can redeem those points with local businesses and/or national retailers for rewards such as sporting goods, electronics, gift cards, educational events, and music, books and videos.

Additionally, during the Dream Machine Recycle Rally contest period, which runs from September 12, 2012 through April 30, 2013, participating schools may compete to win one or more of 90 exciting contest prizes. Three participating schools that recycle the most in their bracket, determined by school size, will receive a $25,000 Dream Green School Makeover Grand Prize to be used for Green Improvements at their schools.

"We are thrilled to kick-off the third year of the Dream Machine Recycle Rally. By making recycling fun and rewarding, we're hoping to help teachers educate their classrooms on the importance of recycling and encourage students to incorporate it as part of their everyday lives," said Anna Palazij, PepsiCo Dream Machine Recycle Rally program manager. "Since the program's first year, we've seen participants demonstrate creativity and enthusiasm in their efforts to reduce their environmental impact, and we're excited to help schools continue to infuse a new energy around recycling during the 2012/2013 program."

In addition to rewards and contests, the more plastic bottles and aluminum cans recycled through the Dream Machine Recycle Rally and the broader Dream Machine program, the more support PepsiCo will provide to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, a national program offering free education in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities, so that our nation's heroes can make their own dreams come true.

To learn more about the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, please visit www.DreamMachineRecycleRally.com. To view the complete contest rules, please visit www.dreammachinerecyclerally.com/about-rally/rules.html.

About the Dream Machine Recycle Rally and Dream Machine Recycling Initiative
The Dream Machine Recycle Rally is a nationwide school recycling program designed to raise awareness among students, grades K-12, about the importance of recycling and encourage them to make recycling part of their everyday lives. The Dream Machine Recycle Rally is part of the broader Dream Machine recycling initiative – a multi-year collaboration between PepsiCo, Waste Management and Keep America Beautiful. Through the Dream Machine recycling initiative, PepsiCo aims to create strategic partnerships to help increase the U.S. beverage container recycling rate to 50 percent by 2018. The Dream Machine program is aligned with PepsiCo's global environmental goals, and will make thousands of new recycling kiosks and bins available in popular public venues such as gas stations, stadiums, and public parks. The more bottles and cans recycled through the Dream Machine recycling initiative, the more support PepsiCo will provide to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, a national program offering free education in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities.

About PepsiCo
PepsiCo is a global food and beverage leader with net revenues of more than $65 billion and a product portfolio that includes 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in annual retail sales. Our main businesses – Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola – make hundreds of enjoyable foods and beverages that are loved throughout the world. PepsiCo's people are united by our unique commitment to sustainable growth by investing in a healthier future for people and our planet, which we believe also means a more successful future for PepsiCo. We call this commitment Performance with Purpose: PepsiCo's promise to provide a wide range of foods and beverages for local tastes; to find innovative ways to minimize our impact on the environment by conserving energy and water and reducing packaging volume; to provide a great workplace for our associates; and to respect, support and invest in the local communities where we operate. For more information, please visit www.pepsico.com.

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About Waste Management
Waste Management, based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Our subsidiaries provide collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. We are also a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States. Our customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America.

About The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities
The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) is a program created at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University and operated under the auspices of SU's Institute for Veterans and Military Families, designed to provide training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 veterans with disabilities resulting from military service. The mission of the EBV is to open the door to business ownership for veterans, by developing skills that relate to the many steps associated with launching and growing a small business. Today, the EBV is offered through a national consortium of world-class schools across the country, which includes Syracuse University, Texas A&M University, The Florida State University, UCLA, Purdue University, the University of Connecticut, Cornell University and Louisiana State University. The training is provided at no cost to qualified veterans.

Contact:
Blythe Posner
Ruder Finn, Inc.
P: (212) 593-6306
E: [email protected]

SOURCE PepsiCo