How have you calculated the Carbon footprint of your business, and what is it?

We worked with the Carbon Trust and the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management to work out the ‘carbon footprint’ for our entire business system. We calculated all the greenhouse gas emissions associated with growing the fruit, transporting the fruit, crushing and blending the fruit, manufacturing the packaging, bottling the drinks, distributing the drinks and keeping them cold in the shops. Now we know the CO2e emissions involved in each step of making our drinks, we have been able to establish that the key areas to focus on for reducing emissions are growing and packing, our packaging materials and smoothie manufacturing.

We have measured the carbon footprint by each recipe type, as this is the easiest means by which to measure our performance over time, and to understand in detail where the impacts are greatest and what can be done to improve them. These figures are displayed on our website.

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How accurate is the carbon footprint?

As you can imagine, doing a carbon footprint for the whole business system is a big and complicated piece of work. We certainly don’t claim that the figures are perfect and in some cases, where we didn’t have all the data, we have made assumptions based on secondary information and expert advice. We first mapped our footprint in 2006 when the methodology was very new too so we’re now giving the whole process a spruce by adopting the recently certified PAS2050. This is endorsed by the Carbon Trust and internationally respected as one of the more thorough and stringent techniques, which sounds good enough for us. We’ve started by re-mapping our strawberries and banana smoothie, with the others to follow soon.

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Does the footprint include carbon emitted when the product is used?

Yes, the methodology looks at the product lifecycle from source to arrival at the store, customer use, and product disposal. The emissions in the use of the product are included where relevant, such as for our one litre cartons where people usually take them home and keep them in the fridge for a day or two.

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How are you planning to reduce innocent’s carbon footprint?

Knowing the CO2e* emissions involved in each step of making our drinks, has enabled us to establish the key areas to focus on for reducing emission; these are growing and packing, our packaging materials and smoothie manufacturing. Through our efforts we have already reduced our carbon footprint by 21% since we first mapped it in 2006. The majority of savings have come from:

• our packaging: our bottles contain recycled PET and we have reduced the amount of packaging material we use, like reducing the amount of paper used in our 1 litre cartons by 8% in 2009.
• our manufacturing: we have resource efficiency action plans with each of our manufacturing partners to lower energy usage and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. We have targeted between 2 and 10% reductions in energy this year, and are aiming for all our sites to recycle at least 60% of their waste (some are up to 95% already).
• our distribution in the UK : we are working with our transportation partners to improve load and fuel efficiencies.

We also do some of the more straightforward things. We don’t airfreight smoothie ingredients, we have used renewable energy in our offices since innocent started over 10 years ago, and we always try and use the train rather than flying anywhere.

*CO2e means carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent. Basically we measure all the greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone and then for each gas work out the equivalent amount of CO2 that would have the same impact on climate change when measured over a specified timescale (generally, 100 years).

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What about food miles? If you were serious about carbon reduction, surely you’d stop getting fruits from all round the world?

Where we source our fruit (and the ‘food miles’ associated with that) is an important issue but there are lots of other sources of carbon emissions across the supply chain which can be just as significant. Our carbon footprint has shown that transporting our fruit is actually not the main source of carbon and never accounts for more than 20% of our total carbon emissions. It’s important to remember that growing fruit outside of its natural environment can have significant environmental impacts – for instance growing bananas in the UK would require a completely artificial environment to replicate a tropical climate.

We also need to consider the social issues, by providing a market for products from less developed nations we can provide much needed income to local communities. Our work on bananas with the Rainforest Alliance not only ensures the farms are truly sustainable and have a clear focus on local environmental issues but also ensures that farm workers are well looked after.

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Wouldn’t you reduce your carbon footprint by transporting your juices in concentrated form?

The main carbon benefit of using concentrate comes from reduced volumes to transport (as the water content is evaporated and added back into the product closer to the country of sale). However it is really important to look at where the energy intensity of the product is greatest and the kind of energy used at each step. With concentrate there are reduced emissions associated with transport, but the energy needed to evaporate the water is often actually a greater proportion of total energy requirements. However, if the energy used for evaporation is from renewable sources then the overall footprint may well be lower. This means there is no one easy rule, it is different for different fruits and different areas.

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Do all your suppliers use renewable energy?

We always encourage any organisation that we are working with to source renewable energy, educate them of the benefits of doing so, and work with proactive green companies to make it easy for them. A number of our suppliers have signed up for renewable energy and we will continue to encourage both existing and new suppliers to change over.

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Do you offset the carbon produced in making your smoothies?

No, we choose to focus on actively reducing the carbon produced in the making of our smoothies. Through our efforts we have already reduced our carbon footprint by 21% since we first mapped it in 2006. Through knowing the CO2e emissions involved in each step of making our drinks, we have been able to establish that the key areas to focus on for reducing emissions are growing and packing, our packaging materials and smoothie manufacturing.

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What should I do to address my business’ carbon footprint?

We undertook two carbon audits for our business - one with the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, and one with the Carbon Trust. These audits were really useful in identifying where the carbon hot spots were within the business and as such where we could focus our attentions on achieving reductions.

In terms of looking for ways to reduce our emissions we have worked with the Carbon Trust (http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/default.ct), Envirowise (http://www.envirowise.gov.uk/) and NISP (http://www.nisp.org.uk/) who all offer free or discounted audit and advisory services depending on the size of your business. All of their websites also have some great reference material to get started on an emission reduction programme. We would definitely recommend that achieving actual reductions is the best first step - it will result in cost reductions throughout your business and emission reductions, love the win win.

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What is the Carbon Trust label and why isn’t it on your packaging?

The Carbon Trust label is a public measure of the carbon footprint of a product, from source to store and product disposal. The label is also a commitment to reduce carbon emissions over a 2 year period. We have shared all the information about our carbon footprint on our website. We first mapped our footprint in 2006 when the methodology was very new, so we’re now giving the whole process a spruce by adopting the recently certified PAS2050 standard, and again we are working the Carbon Trust. However, at the moment we just don’t feel a label on our packaging would be meaningful to our consumers. For innocent, working with the Carbon Trust was not about getting a symbol on pack that we can use as part of our marketing. It was about setting ourselves a genuine measure that we can use to improve our environmental performance across all areas of our business and sharing this information with our consumers. At the moment we have chosen not to use a carbon label for a number of reasons:

• At the moment, it is unlikely that many people actually use the information on pack – nutritional labeling is hard enough for consumers to understand (and is much simpler and more directly relevant that carbon).
• Carbon is only one element of our sustainability strategy – it doesn’t cover all the other stuff we are working on like ethical sourcing or water footprinting – we want to try and communicate more of what we are doing than just carbon.
• A label is good if it helps people choose between things. That choice is limited when there are no other smoothie company carbon labels. More importantly, for people to choose well they need to put it in the context of their diet. An innocent smoothie provides 2 portions of fruit. Even if it had a higher carbon footprint than another drink, it may be a lower carbon way of getting the nutrition you need each day.

For all these reasons, we have tried to communicate our carbon footprint in a meaningful way on our website – it’s unfortunately a more complex picture than we could fit onto a label.

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