PepsiCo Dream Machine Recycle Rally Names St. Cornelius School Winner of "Dream Green School Makeover" Contest

$50,000 Grand Prize will help fund green improvements at the school

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Jun 05, 2012, 01:30 ET

CHICAGO, June 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) today announced that St. Cornelius School in Chicago, Ill., is the official grand prize winner of this year's Dream Machine Recycle Rally "Dream Green School Makeover" contest and will be awarded $50,000 to help fund green improvements at the school. St. Cornelius School recycled more than 885,000 beverage containers – an average of approximately 5,270 containers per student – during the 2011/2012 contest school year. To celebrate their recycling achievements, St. Cornelius School students and faculty joined Dream Machine Recycle Rally representatives and notable members of the community, including City of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, State Senator John G. Mulroe and Alderman John Arena, for an award ceremony today at the school.

Approximately 900 schools in 34 states nationwide participated in the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, and an estimated 24 million containers – more than 1.2 million pounds – have been captured since the program launched in 2010. In its second contest year, the Dream Machine Recycle Rally awarded nearly $250,000 in contest prizes to participating schools.

As one pillar within the broader Dream Machine recycling initiative, the PepsiCo Dream Machine Recycle Rally program aims to raise awareness among students, grades K-12, about the importance of recycling. Participating schools earn points for every non-alcoholic aluminum can or plastic bottle collected through the program, and can redeem those points online for rewards including school supplies, sporting equipment, gift cards and electronics from local businesses and national retailers. The more cans and bottles that are recycled in Dream Machines and through the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, the more PepsiCo will donate to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) to support career training, education and job creation for post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities, so that our nation's heroes can make their own dreams come true.

"We are excited to congratulate all the schools that participated in this year's Dream Machine Recycle Rally and are thrilled to celebrate St. Cornelius School for their outstanding achievements in recycling," said Anna Palazij, Dream Machine Recycle Rally program manager. "They've truly demonstrated their commitment to the environment and to teaching their students about recycling this year by rallying their community around this important cause, and we look forward to seeing their continued commitment to recycling in years to come."

"I want to thank the Dream Machine Recycle Rally for the opportunity to participate in this important program. It's been exciting to see our students, faculty and the entire community so engaged in this effort to make our planet a bit greener," said Christina Bowman, Principal, St. Cornelius School, "We're thrilled to have the chance to use this grand prize for improvements that will help our school to reduce our environmental impact."

The Recycle Rally will begin its summer break starting on July 1, 2012 and will resume with the 2012/2013 Dream Machine Recycle Rally contest school year on September 1, 2012. For more information or to apply to the program, please visit: www.DreamMachineRecycleRally.com.

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, that utilizes www.greenopolis.com. 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 commitments, 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 St. Cornelius School

Nurturing Spirits, Empowering Minds, Strengthening Community

St. Cornelius School celebrates more than 80 years in Jefferson Park, a neighborhood on Chicago's northwest side. By providing an excellent education rooted in the Catholic Christian tradition, St. Cornelius School is preparing students for their future with an excellent academic curriculum that is both challenging and rewarding. St. Cornelius students enter high school with a spirit nurtured to embrace learning, a mind empowered to tackle academic and leadership challenges and a strong caring, community behind them to support their dreams. The school remains vital by keeping its Catholic education affordable while maintaining strong financial health. For more information, please visit www.stcornelius.org, or call 773.283.2192.

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 Greenopolis

Greenopolis is the first interactive community that connects the online conversation about recycling and resource management with opportunities to track the products that consumers use and recycle through recycling kiosks located in public venues and other on-the-go locations. Through Greenopolis, environmentally responsible individuals can earn rewards for recycling and resource-conscious companies can better understand the lifecycle of their products; "Rethink. Recycle. Reward. Closing the Loop Together." Greenopolis LLC is a division of Recyclebank®, the company that helps create a more sustainable future by rewarding people for taking every day green actions with discounts and deals from more than 3,000 local and national businesses. For more information, visit www.greenopolis.com.

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.

SOURCE PepsiCo