St. Pascal School Takes Top Prize in Dream Machine Recycle Rally Dream Green School Makeover Contest

CHICAGO, May 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) announced today that St. Pascal School in Chicago, Ill. is the official winner of the Dream Machine Recycle Rally Dream Green School Makeover contest, taking home the contest's $100,000 grand prize to be used toward green improvements at the school.  With the help of students, faculty, parents and community volunteers, St. Pascal School recycled an average of approximately 2,286 beverage containers per student, the equivalent of 114 pounds of containers per student. An award ceremony took place at Chicago's historic Portage Theater where special guest, Stephen Paea, defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears, and Dream Machine Recycle Rally representatives joined students and faculty to congratulate and thank them for their outstanding recycling achievements.

The Dream Machine Recycle Rally, as one pillar within the broader Dream Machine recycling initiative, aims to raise awareness among students, grades K-12, about the importance of recycling. Participating schools earn points for every non-alcoholic aluminum can or plastic bottle collected through the program, and can redeem those points on www.greenopolis.com for rewards including school supplies, sporting equipment, gift cards and electronics from local businesses and national retailers.

In addition, for all the bottles and cans recycled through the program – the broader Dream Machine program and the Dream Machine Recycle Rally – PepsiCo will provide support to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), a national program offering free education in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities, so that our nation's heroes can make their own dreams come true.

"We're thrilled with the enthusiasm of all the schools that participated in the inaugural year of the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, and are particularly proud of St. Pascal School's exceptional performance," said Anna Palazij, Dream Machine Recycle Rally program manager. "Through their hard work and leadership, they are a reminder to all of us how important it is for everyone to do their part to care for the environment."

"I want to thank the Dream Machine Recycle Rally program for giving us the opportunity to participate in the recycling contest.  This project has brought not only the school and parish together, but also the entire community, and has increased awareness about the importance of recycling," said Ms. Denise Landers, principal of St. Pascal School. "We could not have won this contest without the help of everyone."

Once individual schools sign-up to participate, and are accepted into the Dream Machine Recycle Rally program, the school receives a scanner and laptop, to tally can and bottle collections and manage point redemptions, as well as a toolkit to support program promotions.  Waste Management coordinates the pickup and processing of the recyclables.  Currently, more than 500 schools in 32 states nationwide are registered in the Dream Machine Recycle Rally program with approximately 4.5 million containers collected or nearly 235,000 pounds to-date.

"The Dream Machine Recycle Rally program is taking sustainability to the next level," said Paul Ligon, managing director of Greenopolis, a Waste Management subsidiary. "From our experience, recycling increases if it is fun, rewarding and convenient. With about 4.5 million containers already collected, Greenopolis is proud to have contributed to the success of St. Pascal and every other participating school."

About the Dream Machine Recycle Rally

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, that utilizes www.greenopolis.com. According to Keep America Beautiful, only 12 percent of public spaces are equipped with recycling receptacles, illustrating a clear need for greater public access to recycling bins. The Dream Machine recycling program aims to create strategic partnerships to help increase the U.S. beverage container recycling rate to 50 percent by 2018.  The Dream Machine Recycle Rally will continue through the summer and into the upcoming 2011/2012 school year, when the program will expand its rewards and contests platforms to provide schools with more rewards opportunities and more chances to win contest prizes. For more information or to apply to the program, please visit: www.DreamMachineRecycleRally.com.

About the Dream Machine

The Dream Machine recycling initiative, introduced on Earth Day 2010, will make thousands of new recycling kiosks and bins available in popular public venues such as gas stations, stadiums, supermarkets and public parks.  Dream Machine kiosks are computerized receptacles that include a personal reward system that allows consumers to collect and redeem points for each bottle or can they recycle in the kiosk.  The multi-year collaboration with Waste Management enables the local capture and recycling of PET and Aluminum, using both technology enabled and non-technology enabled recycling kiosks. The Dream Machine kiosks are provided by WM GreenOps, LLC, a subsidiary of Waste Management, and operated by Greenopolis, the first interactive recycling system that brings together online and on-street technologies.  People who recycle their beverage containers in kiosks can redeem points they collect and receive awards when they visit www.greenopolis.com. For more information, please visit: www.Facebook.com/DreamMachine.

About St. Pascal School

St. Pascal School is located on the northwest side of Chicago and has been part of the Portage Park Neighborhood since 1916.  At St. Pascal School, with the help of our students' parents, we help shape the future of all students; and with the experience of a St. Pascal School education, we can show the students what is possible for each of them.  St. Pascal School provides a high-quality education in a Catholic Christian environment based on the Gospel and Catholic tradition.

About PepsiCo

PepsiCo offers the world's largest portfolio of billion-dollar food and beverage brands, including 19 different product lines that generate more than $1 billion in annual retail sales each. Our main businesses -- Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, and Pepsi Cola -- also make hundreds of other enjoyable and wholesome foods and beverages that are respected household names throughout the world. With net revenues of approximately $60 billion, PepsiCo's people are united by our unique commitment to sustainable growth by investing in a healthier future for people and our planet, which we believe also means a more successful future for PepsiCo. We call this commitment Performance with Purpose: PepsiCo's promise to provide a wide range of foods and beverages for local tastes; to find innovative ways to minimize our impact on the environment, including by conserving energy and water usage, and reducing packaging volume; to provide a great workplace for our associates; and to respect, support, and invest in the local communities where we operate. For more information, please visit www.pepsico.com.

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About Waste Management

Waste Management, based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Our subsidiaries provide collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. We are also a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States. Our customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America.

About Greenopolis

Greenopolis LLC, is a subsidiary of Waste Management. Greenopolis.com is the first interactive community that connects the online conversation about recycling and resource management with opportunities to track the products that consumers use and recycle through recycling kiosks located in public venues and other on the go locations. Through Greenopolis, environmentally responsible individuals can earn rewards for recycling and resource-conscious companies can better understand the lifecycle of their products. "Rethink. Recycle. Reward. Closing the Loop Together." For more information: www.greenopolis.com.

About The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities

The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) is a program first created by the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, designed to provide training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 veterans with disabilities resulting from their military service. The mission of the EBV is to open the door to business ownership for our veterans, by developing skills that relate to the many steps associated with launching and growing a small business. Today the EBV is offered by a network of world-class business schools across the U.S., that includes Syracuse University, Texas A&M University, Florida State University, UCLA, Purdue University, University of Connecticut, and Louisiana State University. The training is provided at no cost to qualified and accepted veterans.

SOURCE PepsiCo