recycle week 2008

As you may know, this week is Recycle Week 2008, and our friends over at Tetra Pak are doing their best to raise the campaign's awareness.  We use Tetra Pak's cartons for our big smoothies, so we're obviously very keen to get as many people reycling them as possible. 

Tetra Pak are hoping to get as many people as they can to reycle the cartons and you can even pledge to do this on their website.  Most councils in the UK will now recycle cartons, so it's really just about raising awareness.

If you'd like to find out more about the the project, you could have a look on Tetra Pak's website.  This video of cartons being recycled in Brazil is also pretty interesting.

Very neatly squashed Tetra Paks

A bundle of Tetra Paks

We used to be a Tetra Pak

even more trees

We're still fully in our 'take your comments on board AGM week' at the minute so here's another update on how you're all constantly helping to make us a little bit better.

Last year towards the end of our Buy One Grow One Tree project we asked you all if you could think of anyway to improve the project in future. You gave us some great feedback as comments to this blog post. A lot of the comments concerned us giving you more information on where the trees are planted and the communities benefiting from the trees.

So Geoff got our man on the ground in India to have a look about with his video camera. Here's the result.

We've also made a little Google Map showing you exactly where some of the trees are planted (Thurinjapuram, India) so you can zoom right up. Don't go too fast though, it's like virtual sky diving.

You also said that you wouldn't mind it if you could add our virtual badge to FaceBook profiles as well as blogs and stuff. So we've fixed that this year too. You can now add a badge to your own page by planting a tree and then going here.

We'll be asking for even more feed back again towards the end of this year's project don't worry, but if you have any thoughts or ideas to let us know now just add a comment to this blog post.

popping around

If you've ever wondered what it's like over here at Fruit Towers but have never had a chance to take us up on our offer to pop around, then have a quick watch of these two clips.

One is by Abi from Hippyshopper and the other by a French TV channel. Both star our Sustainability Jess who's as equally great with cameras as she is at doing ventriloquism in French.

ACME climate action

how do you like them bananas

Top bananas at a Rainforest Alliance credited farm we visited.

Bananas are hands down the worlds most popular fruit. They are the most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize. That's a pretty important role to play.

Seeing as bananas are so important, and that we use them as an ingredient in all of our smoothies, we like to make sure we choose exactly the right ones. That not only means choosing the freshest, best quality and best tasting yellow fellows, we also insist that they are all sourced to highest possible ethical standards.

That's why we only use Rainforest Alliance certified bananas found with the help of our friend Carlos.

In order to be credited by the Rainforest Alliance banana growers have to meet a set of important ethical standards which are put in place to help protect communities and the environment. They then get to use the below stamp and become a potential innocent smoothie banana.

All of this means that you can rest assured that the bananas in your smoothie are helping to protect workers rights and the local environment where they are produced. Not to mention they're damn tasty and good for you.

please say hello to carlos

This is Carlos. You might recognise him from his guest role in our new telly ad.

Carlos is our man on the ground in Latin America.  He works with the Rainforest Alliance, a charity that is pioneering a better way of growing fruit that helps protect workers, local communities, wildlife and the environment. It's a great organisation and one we're proud to help support.  Currently, all our bananas come from Rainforest Alliance accredited farms.  And we're working with Carlos to introduce this more enlightened way of growing to the places where our pineapples come from. Ultimately we want all fruit to be grown in this way. 

Carlos' official title is quite appropriately 'Fruit Supply Coordinator' and he knows the fruit industry inside out having run his own banana plantation for 20 years previously, which makes him a very good friend for us to have.

Some other interesting facts about Carlos include:

he's got a great moustache

he scrubs up nice when invited to awards ceremonies

other than fruit, his main passion in life is great Costa Rican coffee, of which he can be seen enjoying a cup with our Simon above.

He even gave us a bag of his absolute favourite coffee to bring back to fruit towers with us.

Thanks Carlos. Keep up the great work and good luck with those pineapples.

blog eat blog

Last week Adam, one of the founders and chief greenskeeper for method products, came over to Fruit Towers to meet our Sustainability Jess. After going home method blogged about their visit so we thought we'd blog them back. Hello method.

We think method are great - they make non-toxic cleaning products made with natural ingredients. Jess and Adam had lots to talk about - method use 100% recycled plastic for their products, just like our bottles, and do great work on carbon reduction, ethical sourcing of the ingredients for their products, and trying to have a positive impact on the world.

We swapped lots of great ideas, and promised to keep in touch in the future, after all four hands are better than two.

simple steps

Thanks to Peter who sent us in a link to this great little video.  You can also click here for more info.  When you think about it, it really is pretty simple.   

ship shape

Ellen Macarthur came to visit us at Fruit Towers today.  She is keen to learn more about sustainability and to incorporate it into all that she does so we sat down for a smoothie and a chat about what we do here at innocent and why and what we can all do to lessen our impact on the planet. 

Ellen talked about the challenges of going for records on a boat and how you take the absolute minimum with you, are careful never to leave the computer screens or the lights on, and generally manage what you have down to the last drop of fuel or water because if you run out there is no way you can stop for more. We thought this was a great example for how we all need to remember how many resources we all use every day - because while we can just duck out to the shops if we run out of milk, and there is always energy when we want switch on the lights, ultimately there is a finite amount of resources on the planet and if we destroy the environment, or use them all up - it's just gone. 

So we'll try hard to keep doing our bit to keep using recycled materials, reducing our carbon footprint, and generally lessening our impacts day by day.  Good luck on your next endeavour Ellen.

Posted by Sustainability Jess.

climbing to new heights

There was a bit in Sunday's Observer Food Monthly on our acai farmers in the Brazilian Amazon.

Photos by courtesy of Gary Calton/ eyevine. Great shot Gary, thanks.

All of the acai berries that we use in our smoothies are grown sustainably from palms native to the Amazon estuary. These palms only grow within 25 yards of the Amazon in the mineral-rich tidal wetlands, meaning that they're naturally irrigated twice a day. What's more, our acai supplier is certified as organic, and is working with the acai collectors to preserve biodiversity, address social issues such as adequate nutrition and develop other sustainable local industries, such as making jewellery made from acai seeds.

The acai berries are collected by scaling the acai tree using hemp tape looped around the climber's ankles to give a good grip.

It's easier said than done though, as Rich found out.

"Just crop the photo below my feet and it will look like I nearly got to the top."

The berries are then threshed from the branch, and placed in baskets for transportation.

If you fancy trying a whole 35 of these hand picked, antioxidant rich acai berries from the banks of the world's biggest river, then why not have a go on our detox superfoods smoothie.