innocent and the Rainforest Alliance have been working together for over 2 years now.  The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-government organisation whose mission is to protect ecosystems and the people and wildlife that depend on them by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behaviour.  They provide certification programmes for sustainable forestry, agriculture and tourism in 56 countries around the world.

We really like the Rainforest Alliance for 4 main reasons:

• Their standards cover both social and environmental issues


• They help farms to build their long-term skills and capability for more efficient production and a higher quality crop


• They work with all types and sizes of farms giving us the purchasing flexibility to buy the variety and quality of fruit that we need


• The certification process is undertaken by local NGOs ensuring that local cultural issues are taken into consideration

We already buy all of our bananas from Rainforest Alliance certified farms. Following our visits to Central America last year we were concerned about the environmental and social impacts associated with pineapple production and we became fixated on only buying pineapple from certified farms as well - the only problem was that there were no certified farms. Amazing the difference that time, a lot of persuading, and a little bit of a helping hand can make, and now over a third of our pineapple juice is from certified farms. Target for 2009 is to move this to 100% - we'll let you know when we get there.

In addition to buying the fruit grown in this more enlightened way, we have also committed to funding a three year programme with the Rainforest Alliance to assist in teaching more farmers this better way of growing and certifying more fruit such as pineapples, passion fruit, and oranges.

Here are some of the people from the Rainforest Alliance who we’re working with on these projects. You can say hello to Carlos (who has even starred in one of our TV ads) here.