Coca-Cola’s new map tells the origin story of your juice
Curious about where the oranges in your breakfast juice comes from? Or want to be sure that the sugar cane in your soda isn’t harvested by children before you take a sip?
The Coca-Cola Company feels that their customers have the right to know the answers to these types of questions. The company has decided to become more transparent about their sourcing, and show where and how their raw materials are grown. They developed a new sustainable agriculture map that tells how they’re changing the way products go from the farm to market.
“Most people don’t know that Coca-Cola works with our suppliers and other partners to create better agricultural practices for growing tea in China, or that we’re helping mango farmers in India double their production,” writes the director of sustainable agriculture, Ben Jordan, in a blog post. “We want to use the sourcing map to bring those kinds of stories to the surface.”
Sustainable sourcing of all priority ingredients
Right now, the map displays 11 of the company’s top priority ingredients in the countries where they are grown. You can read about lemons in Argentina, for example. 90 percent of the lemons that Coca-Cola sources from the country are sustainably sourced. By 2020, the goal is to sustainably source all priority ingredients, which means the farm suppliers must meet certain standards relating to workplace rights, environmental protection and responsible farming management. The goal is particularly impressive considering The Coca-Cola Company’s aims to significantly grow its juice business in the coming years.
Eduardo Garza, director of the company’s Global juice procurement, explained in a recent article, “We’re working hard to expand the sourcing of our fruit, and to sustainably source our five key fruit ingredients—lemon, orange, mango, apple, and grape. Some of our most successful sustainable agriculture projects are related to our fruit sourcing, with shared value presenting for economies, environment, farmers and our business.”
