The project is a part of the Environmental Policy and Planning Commission, with the goal of ending UC Davis’ pouring rights contract with PepsiCo
By JORDAN POLTORAK — campus@theaggie.org
The Pour Out Pepsi project functions under ASUCD’s Environmental Policy and Planning Commission (EPPC). Their goal is to end UC Davis’ contract with PepsiCo due to a lack of sustainable and healthy options for students. Many of the beverages sold on campus utilize single-use plastics, which raises questions for the university’s plan of phasing out unsustainable containers.
The 10-year contract with PepsiCo was set to expire in September 2024, but the university renewed the contract in July 2024. The contract reportedly provides $10 million to the university over the span of 10 years.
Ivy Schlosser, a fourth-year political science major and the EPPC commissioner and co-lead of the Pouring Rights Contract Project, spoke on the contract’s renewal.
“We explicitly asked them to not make a decision until school resumed in the fall, because we knew that they would [renew the contract and] there wouldn’t be students present to make a complaint against it,” Schlosser said.
Due to the renewal, the Pour Out Pepsi project is taking a different approach to their goals this school year.
Piper Mills, a fourth-year environmental policy analysis and planning major and EPPC commissioner and the project’s contract lead, expanded on their next steps.
“We are now working less in conjunction with administration to try to negotiate with them and talk about alternatives,” Mills said. “It is now more of a student outreach project. We are trying to amplify voices that are in opposition to that renewal.”
This new contract calls for 80% of PepsiCo products to be packaged in non-plastic containers, however, beverages such as Naked Juice, Muscle Milk, Gatorade and Pure Leaf Tea were given until 2030 to remove their plastic packaging, according to the EPPC’s website.
Mills spoke about the cost of buying Pepsi products for the university.
“[PepsiCo] has explicitly told us they cannot meet these single-use plastic guidelines,” Mills said. “They also charge the university a higher cost than if we were to wholesale purchase things from Costco. So not only is it an unsustainable pouring rights contract, it’s also not in the university’s best interest.”
The Pour Out Pepsi movement is not unique to UC Davis’ campus. UC Berkeley has a chapter with the same goal in mind, as their PepsiCo contract was renewed in September 2023.
Another one of the project’s goals for this school year is looking into the legality of the contract renewal. Mills and Schlosser spoke about how requests for proposals can be written to make it so only one company is able to bid on the contract. However, they had wanted to give more vendors, preferably sustainable vendors, the ability to bid on the contract as well.
Currently the project is promoting a boycott of all Pepsi products on campus, with the exception of the Coffee House (CoHo), which is the only location not included in the pouring rights contract.
Schlosser said that the pouring rights contract goes against what the university stands for.
“A monopoly with the second-largest plastic polluter in the world doesn’t fit the university’s values,” Schlosser said.
Written by: Jordan Poltorak — campus@theaggie.org
