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Soft drinks company PepsiCo has launched a computerised recycling kiosk that will allow consumers to collect and redeem points for every bottle they recycle.

Only 34 per cent of soft drinks containers in the US currently get recycled and PepsiCo is looking to increase that figure to at least 50 per cent by 2018. The beverage company is allying itself with Waste Management Inc in a bid to encourage the American public to recycle over 400 million containers every year across as many as 3,000 kiosks. The machines will issue recyclers with a receipt with reward points redeemable on travel and movie tickets, or coupons for Pepsi products.

According to the Dream Machine's Facebook page, the energy saved by recycling a single plastic Pepsi bottle is enough to power a 60 watt light bulb for six hours. Yet still, over 130 billion bottles and cans get thrown away every year in the US.

Tim Carey, sustainability director at PepsiCo, believes that offering small incentives is the answer. 'You could say, shouldn't we do an environmental cause perhaps? But we've got to get to people who aren't recycling. There's an element of experimentation here. How can we change the model? We have to get people to put up with a little inconvenience and say, I'll hang on to it a little bit and get a little bit of a reward.'

For every bottle deposited, PepsiCo will also make a donation to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans (EBV), a business training programme for American veterans with disabilities.

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