PepsiCo announced 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.
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 Sept.12, 2012 to 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, in a prepared statement. "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 the nation's heroes can make their own dreams come true.
To learn more about the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, please visit www.DreamMachineRecycleRally.com.
