Washington Partners with PepsiCo Dream Machine Recycling Initiative

PepsiCo has partnered with the DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID) and the District Department of Public Works (DPW) to make Washington, D.C. the nation's first city to partner with the Dream Machine recycling initiative. A total of 363 recycling bins will be placed throughout the DowntownDC BID area, offering what PepsiCo says is a convenient and rewarding recycling option for people while they are on-the-go and advancing the BID's Greening Downtown DC initiative.

PepsiCo's Dream Machine recycling initiative, which aims to place both interactive kiosks and bins, was created in partnership with Waste Management and Keep America Beautiful.

With approximately 1,500 Dream Machines located in more than 20 states to date, the program aims to increase the U.S. beverage container recycling rate from 34 to 50 percent by 2018.

"This latest public-private partnership achieves the BID goal of providing citywide approaches to environmental issues while enhancing the quality of the visitor experience Downtown," says Richard H. Bradley, executive director of the DowntownDC BID.  "This partnership will have real results. We are projecting a diversion of more than one million pounds of recyclable material annually from Downtown waste."

"I am happy to welcome PepsiCo to the partnership between DPW and the DowntownDC BID," says DPW Director, William O. Howland, Jr. "By contributing more than 300 new recycling cans, PepsiCo gives us a tremendous boost toward reaching our 45 percent diversion rate goal."

The DowntownDC BID's Safety/Hospitality and Maintenance workers, known as SAMs, will be responsible for maintaining the bins and serving as on-the-street liaisons who educate people about public recycling and the Dream Machine program.

Jeremy Cage, senior vice president of Innovation and Insights at PepsiCo and head of the Dream Machine recycling initiative, says, "We are thrilled that our nation's capital is the first city to offer the Dream Machine program to its community. With collaborative partnerships like this one, we are confident that we can help provoke behavioral change by making recycling more convenient, and we encourage others to join us as we strive to make positive change for our planet."

For all the bottles and cans recycled in a Dream Machine bin or kiosk in Washington, D.C., and across the nation, PepsiCo will make a contribution to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), a national program offering free, experiential training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities.

"The unemployment rate among young veterans today is 20 percent—its highest rate in the post-9/11 era," said J. Michael Haynie, EBV founder and assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management. "Bringing the Dream Machine program to Washington, D.C. represents an opportunity for the city and its residents to play a direct role in helping our returning veterans create their own jobs in the most American way possible, through entrepreneurship."

To learn more about the Dream Machine program, visit www.facebook.com/DreamMachine.