PepsiCo, Inc., through the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative, announced a donation of $500,000 for the third consecutive year to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), a national program offering career training, education and job creation for post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities. With this announcement, PepsiCo is proud to have donated a cumulative $1.5 million to the EBV since its Dream Machine program launched in 2010.
To celebrate this year's donation and encourage even more recycling, PepsiCo will present a check for $500,000 during a Men's Basketball game in early 2013 at Syracuse University, home to the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) and Whitman School of Management, which founded and operates the EBV program.
"PepsiCo is honored to provide this donation and announce our continued support of the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities in 2013 through the Dream Machine program, which makes on-the-go recycling easier and more convenient," said Jeremy Cage, senior vice president and head of the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative, PepsiCo, in a prepared statement. "Our strategic partnership with the EBV allows recyclers to do right by our planet and U.S. veterans with disabilities, a group that has incredible skills to offer as they reenter civilian life."
Since 2010, the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative has partnered with EBV to support its unique resources for veterans: the more plastic bottles and aluminum cans recycled in Dream Machine kiosks and bins across the nation and via the Dream Machine Recycle Rally program for K-12 schools, the more support PepsiCo provides to EBV.
"With PepsiCo's support of the EBV program through the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative, we have been able to strengthen our mission to provide free education to post-9/11 veterans with disabilities over the past three years," said Mike Haynie, EBV founder, IVMF executive director and Barnes Professor of Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University's Whitman School. "We are thankful for our partnership with PepsiCo and are excited to be a part of the Dream Machine's efforts to promote behavior that helps our environment."
Created by PepsiCo in collaboration with Waste Management and Keep America Beautiful, the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative has made over 4,000 recycling kiosks and bins available at popular public locations across North America. The kiosks are computerized receptacles that include a personal reward system, which allows consumers to earn points for every plastic bottle or aluminum can that they recycle in the kiosk. Additionally, the initiative's Dream Machine Recycle Rally, a national program encouraging students, grades K-12, to make recycling a part of their everyday lives, offers participating schools the chance to earn rewards and compete for contest prizes.
With the combined efforts of K-12 schools and recyclers across the U.S., the Dream Machine Recycling Initiative has diverted more than 160 million beverage containers from landfill to recycling since the program's inception in 2010 and served as a catalyst for other companies to step up their recycling efforts – all progressing toward PepsiCo's goal of helping increase the U.S. beverage container recycling rate to 50 percent by 2018.
