Naked JuicePicture this: it’s a hot August afternoon. You just ran a few miles and you are in need of some replenishment. You swing by your friendly, neighborhood Whole Foods Market to re-fuel. In front of the beverage cooler, you pause for a moment to consider the myriad items we carry. Like many of our customers, you might reach for one of our familiar brands that you know and trust – Naked Juice.

And that is a good choice. Naked Juice has taken a lead in the food industry in terms of scrutinizing their carbon footprint. They are making some cool choices to improve the sustainability of their production facility, their juice bottles and even the tasty stuff inside the bottles. Here’s how.

Their first big move will actually be that: a relocation into a brand new LEED certified production facility. This means they have met some pretty stringent criteria for water and energy efficiency, use of recycled building materials and waste reduction. Whole Foods Market has also gone through this certification with some of our new stores and it’s quite an accomplishment!

Naked Juice RenewabottleNext, Naked Juice announced that they will be the first national beverage company to use 100% post consumer recycled plastic, or RPet. This means their bottles will be made from previously used bottles. This is pretty important for a few reasons. Most drink bottles are made out of #1 Plastic, or PET, and this is one of the most prevalent and easily recycled plastics. The folks at Naked Juice estimate that once they complete their transition, they will be able to reduce virgin plastic use by over 8 million pounds. This also translates into over 57,000 barrels of oil a year that they will not be importing.

As you know, there is a lot of plastic in the environment – including an area in the Pacific Ocean called the North Pacific Gyre, where many tons of plastic bottles have ended up. Naked Juice estimates that if you took a 55-story building and stuffed it full of plastic, it would equal the amount of plastic they will be keeping out of the trash stream. Not only that, their leadership serves as encouragement for other big brands to use recycled plastic and create a bigger market for RPet.

And that ain’t all, folks. Naked Juice has also decided that they will become the first major American juice company to partner with Rainforest Alliance to certify the tons of bananas used in their juice. Rainforest Alliance is an independent nonprofit working to ensure that the folks who grow your food use sustainable environmental and agricultural practices while gaining better livelihoods and working conditions. They are one of three certifiers who are part of Whole Foods Market’s Whole Trade Guarantee™, which guarantees that the products are ethically and sustainably sourced. Rainforest Alliance’s green tree frog logo can be found on many of the chocolate, coffee and produce items that we sell. Naked Juice’s decision means that over 20 million more tons of sustainably grown, fair trade bananas will be produced every year.

Whole Foods Market is proud to partner with cool vendors such as Naked Juice, whose commitment to quality and sustainability sets new benchmarks in the natural foods industry.

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