Lanoka Harbor-Area Elementary School Awarded $35K

Press release from PepsiCo:

May 27 2020

(Purchase, NY) – PepsiCo Recycling awarded Cedar Creek Elementary School $35,000 for placing fourth in the annual nationwide Recycle Rally contest. The Lanoka Harbor, N.J. school can use the cash prize for sustainability initiatives or other important projects benefiting the student community. PepsiCo Recycle Rally is a free program offering funding, resources and incentives to enable and encourage more than 7,000 K-12 schools to recycle.

With help from the local community, Cedar Creek students recycled an estimated 14 million containers during the 2019-2020 school year. The school has recycled an estimated 43 million containers since joining the program in 2016.

“We brought Recycle Rally to Cedar Creek to create a movement that would include our entire student body,” said Marni Zito, special education teacher and Recycle Rally lead at Cedar Creek Elementary School. “It doesn’t matter where you are academically or socially, recycling allows every student to make a big impact. We’re proud of our students’ achievements and the extent to which they’ve galvanized the Lanoka Harbor community around a single cause.”

PepsiCo Recycling is committed to advancing PepsiCo’s vision of a world where plastic need never become waste and understands that the future of recycling requires the involvement of the next generation. In its 10th year, Recycle Rally continues to harness the passion and activism of young people to improve recycling where they live and study. The program is designed to energize K-12 students around recycling, to help students understand the impact of their efforts, and to celebrate their achievements. Recycle Rally is part of PepsiCo Recycling’s broader efforts to support a circular economy.

“We commend Cedar Creek Elementary School for placing among the top five schools competing in the Recycle Rally Challenge League for the third consecutive year,” said Tom Mooradian, Senior Manager of Environmental Sustainability at PepsiCo. “We are thankful for long-standing partnerships with schools who share our belief that environmental sustainability is vital to our future, and we are inspired by Cedar Creek’s impressive organization of a community-wide effort.”

This year, PepsiCo Recycle Rally awarded more than $350,000 in cash prizes to schools that collected the highest quantities of recyclable material in the contest’s Challenge League, measured by weight, and Universal League, measured by bag count. The 2019-2020 Recycle Rally program began at the beginning of the 2019 school year and concluded a month early in March 2020, due to school closures related to COVID-19. Since the program launched in 2010, Recycle Rally schools have recycled more than 34.5 million pounds of PET, HDPE, aluminum, fiber, glass, and other plastics and metals, diverting these materials from landfill.

For more information on Recycle Rally and the full list of winners, please visit www.pepsicorecycling.com/RecycleRally.

About PepsiCo Recycling

The PepsiCo Recycling initiative, introduced on Earth Day 2010, brings innovative recycling solutions to colleges and universities, K-12 schools, gas stations and popular retail locations across North America with the goal of increasing beverage container recycling rates. With programs including college and university container collections and Recycle Rallies – and the help of many strategic partners, students and community members – PepsiCo is on its way to capturing more recyclables and creating a culture of recycling. To learn more, please visit PepsiCoRecycling.com.

About PepsiCo Recycle Rally

PepsiCo Recycle Rally is a free program that provides recycling funding, resources and infrastructure to U.S. K-12 schools needed to instill proper recycling habits at a young age and close a national shortfall in recycling education. Since its 2010 inception, Recycle Rally has kept over 600 million recyclable containers out of landfills and is now active in over 7,000 schools.

About PepsiCo

PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $67 billion in net revenue in 2019, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and Tropicana. PepsiCo's product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including 23 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.

Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in Convenient Foods and Beverages by Winning with Purpose. "Winning with Purpose" reflects our ambition to win sustainably in the marketplace and embed purpose into all aspects of the business. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com.

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