Quiz: How many liters of water does it take to make one liter of Pepsi Cola?

a) One liter
b) Two liters
c) Two and half liters

If you answered c, two and half liters, you are correct!

PepsiCo is a multinational producer of sodas and snacks. It is also one of the world’s major consumers of water. Water is the number one ingredient in PepsiCo’s beverage products, and therefore water quality and quantity are vital for PepsiCo’s success. PepsiCo operates in many communities around the world and has the moral and legal obligation to ensure that residents’ access to water is not affected by over-exploitation or pollution as a direct result of its operations.

In 2003, PepsiCo’s water-use license was revoked in Pudussery, India in response to charges that the company’s bottling plants were over-consuming and depleting community groundwater. While communities in the United States struggle to deal with the growing water crisis, in many other countries people are literally dying from lack of access to safe, sufficient, and affordable water.

PepsiCo is a major global corporation whose policies and products affect the lives of millions. Join UUSC in challenging PepsiCo to do the right thing both morally and legally to ensure the human right to water.

What You Can Do

PepsiCo is holding its annual meeting on May 7, 2008, in Plano, Texas. UUSC and our colleague NorthStar Asset Management, a Boston-based wealth management firm, are presenting a resolution calling on the company to adopt a comprehensive human right to water policy that affirms its commitment to safe, sufficient, accessible, and affordable water for all.

If you own stock in PepsiCo or are invested in a mutual fund that holds PepsiCo stock, you can help UUSC strengthen its work to defend the human right to water around the world. We ask you to support water justice for all and vote your proxy in favor of our shareholder resolution.

If you are a PepsiCo shareholder

Vote by phone up until 5 p.m. Eastern time, May 6, 2008. Call 800-690-6903 and transmit your voting instructions. Have your proxy card in hand when you call and follow the instructions. You also may vote online at www.proxyvote.com using the information on your proxy card and following the instructions.

If you hold investments in a mutual fund that owns PepsiCo shares

Call your mutual fund representatives and let them know that you support the NorthStar–UUSC resolution on the human right to water and you would like them to please vote in its favor on May 7. Below is a list of the largest mutual fund investors in PepsiCo, with contact information.

CREF Stock Account, mutual funds, 800-223-1200

Fidelity Contrafund, Mutual Fund, 800-544-4774.

SPDR Trust Series, 212-306-1000.

American Funds, Growth Fund of America; Investment Company of America; Washington Mutual Investors Fund; Capital Income Builder, 800-421-0180.

Vanguard, 500 Index Fund; Institutional Index Fund; Total Stock Market Index Fund, 877-662-7447.

Background

Around the world, 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. Each year, dehydration from disease claims the lives of nearly 2 million children. More people in the last 10 years have died from this cause than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II.

UUSC worked with NorthStar Asset Management on a shareholder resolution requiring PepsiCo to adopt a human-right-to-water policy for all of its domestic and international operations. Current PepsiCo policy has led to irresponsible water management and overuse, as well as contamination of local water resources in communities around the globe. PepsiCo uses 2.5 liters of water to produce just 1 liter of soda.

The impact of large-scale soda bottling has become widely known in relation to PepsiCo and Coca-Cola operations in India. Data collected in the town of Mehdiganj confirm that groundwater levels dropped up to 26 feet during the first seven years of Coca-Cola operations, from 1999 to 2006. Wells and hand water pumps in the vicinity have dried up, creating a crisis for Mehdiganj residents and local farmers who rely on the groundwater resource to meet their daily water needs.

There is a strong basis in international law supporting UUSC’s and others’ belief that the right to safe, accessible, and affordable water should be internationally recognized as a basic human right.

PepsiCo conducts business in countries that have constitutional provisions protecting the human right to water, and other countries, such as Argentina and India, which enforce the human right to water through, respectively, the right to healthy environment and the right to life.

UUSC and NorthStar are asking PepsiCo to recognize international human rights standards and fulfill its obligations as a responsible global citizen. When shareholders direct the company to adopt a human right to water policy, PepsiCo will be compelled to create innovative strategies to conserve water and assess the impact of their operations on the communities and environment in which they operate.