April 2nd, 2009
Green-tech wrinkle in Pepsi vs. Coke debate
I am one of those annoying people who doesn’t care much about which cola I drink, but if you’re a purist, PepsiCo has just given Pepsi fans another reason to brag: the company is in the process of installing roughly 30 new “green” vending machines across the United States that are designed to eliminate so-called F-gases that are widely found in refrigerators and air-conditioners. (Here’s a little treatise on why the “F” word really is a very bad thing.) The machines also use 15 percent less electricity that your typical machine.
OK, so 30 machines isn’t all that many. But it’s more than zero and it’s a positive start when it comes to addressing a problem that Greenpeace and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are trying to highlight more visibly.
According to these organizations, F-gases are directly responsible for 17 percent of the global warming problem. Technology to address that problem wasn’t been widely available in the United States until last summer when ice-cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s introduced GreenFreeze freezers in some of its locations across the country. General Electric is also focusing on technological solutions to the problem.
PepsiCo has quite a bit of work to do: it has an estimated 4 million to 5 million vending machines around the world. Coca-Cola was called on the carpet on this a few years back and it has pledged to cut out the refrigerators with the F-word, too. But I can’t find any more recent information about its efforts than this Greenpeace article from a couple of years back.
Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist in the New York area with more than 20 years experience covering the high-tech industry. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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