hot feet

In 2006 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.

This year we have given the whole process a spruce by redoing our audit to the new PAS2050 methodology which has been internationally recognised as one of the more thorough and stringent techniques. This is how the results look:

So are these figures good or bad? This is really hard to say, as even though carbon footprinting of products is becoming more common, each product is made from different ingredients with a different supply chain – so a direct comparison is not that straightforward.  What is really useful is knowing the CO2e* emissions involved in each step of making our drinks, which allows us to focus on the key opportunities for reducing emissions.

• our packaging: making sure our bottles contain as much recycled PET as possible, and that we reduce the amount of packaging material we use. See our packaging actions on this page.
• our bottling: we have sustainability action plans with each of our manufacturing partners to lower energy and water usage and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. See our packaging actions on this page

It is also important for us to ensure that we work on our fruit miles. The main way we can achieve reductions here is through our choice of transport. We don't use airfreight, but instead use ships (as a first preference) or road transport.  We also make significant reductions by squeezing, pulping or pureeing the fruit in the country in which it is grown so that we are not transporting waste (like skin, peels and stones) or air (in between pieces of fruit) to the UK. Lastly we make sure that we use technology such as oxygen free packaging wherever possible which allows us to reduce the cooling requirement during transport.

Whilst this is not perfect and there are still impacts, 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.

*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).