Pepsi’s new x-factor: eco-friendly potato chips

Coca-Cola and Pepsi have had one of the nastiest rivalries ever in the history of American business. Every year they try to one up each other in launching new flavors of snacks, or adopting hip green ideas like HFC free vending machines. Pepsi has taken the latest shot at the Atlanta based beverage giant with their new a web-based crop management system to help farm potatoes in the UK that will later turn into bagged chips or crisps under the Walker brand.

Many think of Pepsi or Coke just as beverage companies but they sell a lot more stuff in the supermarket than you may think. PepsiCo Inc. owns Frito-Lay which includes Lay’s in the US and makes Walkers Crisps (chips) in the UK. In the UK alone, Pepsi buys 350,000 tons of potatoes each year.

Their new crop management system called “i-crop,” was developed with help from Cambridge University. According to a press release, i-crop will help “farmers around the world to monitor, manage and reduce their water use and carbon emissions, while also maximizing potential yield and quality.” In addition, farms will switch over to potatoes that need less water and are easier to store. Pepsi has started testing i-crop at twenty two farms in the UK with a goal of reducing carbon emissions and water use by 50% in the next five years. There are additional plans to roll out the program to the rest of Europe in 2011.

While this sounds like an honest attempt at adding green elements to the production process, each company has seen their fair share of blunders. Pepsi had their marketing campaign that claimed all of their Lay’s potato chips in the US were local, while their web site “bag tracker” revealed that your bag of BBQ chips had a lot more mileage than a so-called local item. In India, Coke is under heavy attack by residents for the practices employed in their bottling factories. Residents In Kerala claim that the plant is the main cause for the area’s water scarcity and even polluted water supplies.

Pepsi and Coke need to step up in areas beyond farming practices and HFC free vending machines; they need to think about potato chip bag and bottle recycling. Both are opposed to the expansion of bottle redemption programs, but pilot programs like Pepsi’s Dream Machine could help the cause as well as give them some great PR.