climate changers

on our way to carbon neutral

Unless you like living under rocks or burying your head in sand, you'll probably know that we're bang in the middle of a climate emergency. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges we face and collectively, we need to do everything we can to stop it. That's why, along with hundreds of other B Corps, we've committed to being carbon neutral by 2030 (if not before).

To reach that goal, we're trimming out carbon from every part of our supply chain and building one of the most sustainable factories the world has ever seen. Based over in Rotterdam, it's going to take millions of miles off the road, waste fewer precious resources and run on 100% renewable energy. Read on to find out what else we're doing to hit our 2030 target.

the story so far

2004

With help from the Edinburgh Centre for Climate Change, we become one of the first companies in the UK to map our carbon footprint.

2006

We trial putting our carbon footprint on our packaging in partnership with the Carbon Trust. It's a nice idea but a couple of decades too soon.

2007

We take a big chunk out of our carbon footprint by moving all of our bottles to 100% rPET. To find out more about our journey with plastic, head to our recycling activists page.

2010

We map our carbon footprint again. The results prompt us to chat with our factory partners about how they can reduce their carbon emissions. Our biggest factory (at the time) decides to switch to 100% renewable energy.

2015

We make a bunch of changes to our logistics network. They include switching to greener modes of transport (like using trains instead of trucks) and finding more efficient routes to move our drinks around.

2017

We find out that those changes we started making back in 2015 have taken 1.2 million miles off the road. We celebrate by mapping our carbon footprint again.

2019

We map our carbon footprint for the umpteenth time, then pledge to go carbon neutral by 2025. We make the announcement alongside our fellow B Corps at COP25 in Madrid. Olé.

2020

We start our biggest carbon-saving project yet – building a carbon neutral factory over in Rotterdam. Despite attempts to name it Fruity McFruitface, we call it the blender instead.

where our carbon comes from

how we're reducing our emissions

(from the farm to the fridge)

cutting carbon from our farms

Our ingredients make up the biggest chunk of our carbon footprint. When we last tallied things up in 2019, they were responsible for 42% of it. To make sure we're getting that figure down, we've set a goal to reduce carbon emissions in our ingredient farming by 5% per drink by 2023. We're doing this through our farming innovation fund – a €100,000 pot of money that helps farmers improve biodiversity and livelihoods while capturing carbon at the same time. We're also working with our factories to bring down their energy usage through our hero supplier programme.

moving our drinks around

After our ingredients have left the farm, the next chunk of our carbon footprint comes from squashing them and moving them around. Here's some of the stuff we're doing on that front.

• We try to never fly our fruit. Popping it on a boat means it emits 86 times less carbon (at least) than if we put it on a plane.

• We use recycled and plant plastic in our bottles, which have a lower carbon footprint than virgin plastics made from oil.

• More than 80% of our drinks are blended and bottled in factories using renewable electricity. We won't stop working until that gets to 100%.

• We're finding ways to reduce the number of miles our drinks travel (our sustainable factory is a big part of this) and have switched to lower carbon transport, like trains and barges, where we can. We've also trialled fully electric trucks in Germany. Fancy.

greener grassy vans and offices

All our cars and main offices are carbon neutral already. Our main offices use renewable electricity and here in Fruit Towers, we use biogas too. In any countries where we have shared offices, we offset the energy usage of all our staff who work there. Over the next few years, we're aiming to replace our company cars and grassy vans with fully electric ones that run off renewable energy. Until then, we'll offset any emissions and keep coming up with nifty ways to make our offices nice and sustainable.

100%

of our innocent-only offices run on 100% renewable energy

80%

of our drinks are blended and bottled in factories using renewable electricity

42%

of our carbon footprint comes from growing, squashing and transporting our ingredients

our hero supplier programme

For us to do business responsibly, we need our suppliers to be responsible too. Our hero supplier programme helps them build sustainability into their business, reduce wastage and means everyone's getting really good at turning the lights off whenever they leave a room. Result.

find out more

waste not, want not

Remember when your mum wouldn't let you leave the table until you'd finished all the food on your plate? It must have stuck with us, because now we make sure none of our drinks or resources go to waste either. If we do have some drinks going spare, we want to make sure every single one is still enjoyed by a human. That’s why all across Europe, we’ve partnered with some great organisations (like fellow B Corp Neighbourly in the UK, Phenix in France and Tafel Deutschland in Germany and Austria) who help us get our drinks to the local charities and food banks that need them.

how we're balancing the rest

By doing all the stuff we've talked about above, we're reducing the amount of carbon it takes to make our drinks. But until we've worked out how to make a drink without producing any carbon at all, we'll need to balance the rest through something called carbon offsetting.

Carbon offsetting is easiest to explain with a glass of water and a sponge. If we imagine our annual carbon emissions as a glass of water, reducing our emissions is like putting less water in the glass and carbon offsetting is like dipping a sponge into it until all the water has been soaked up. The most popular way to soak up carbon emissions is by planting trees, which capture and store carbon as they grow. Another way is to invest in initiatives that avoid greenhouse gases in the first place. For example, investing in greener energy options that replace fossil fuels or projects that conserve the world's natural 'carbon sinks', like tropical rainforests or peat bogs.

Between now and 2023, we'll be working with leading carbon offsetters and tree planting experts to create our very own climate action plan. The plan will invest in local initiatives (like tree planting and peat bog conservation) and more global ones that protect or regenerate rainforests in areas of the world that are the most impacted by climate change.

our s͟u͟s͟t͟a͟i͟n͟a͟b͟l͟e͟ factory

To help us reach our goal of being carbon neutral by 2030, we're building the world's most sustainable healthy drinks factory over in Rotterdam. We've called it 'the blender' and it's fair to say that we're pretty excited about it.