Case study innocent
innocent drinks have always had strong environmental values and big ambitions when it comes to sustainability. In 2017 they wanted to tackle the challenge of taking more carbon out of their supply chain.
As a growing international business, innocent has a supply chain that sources fruits and vegetables for their smoothies globally, which are then blended and put into bottles at a number of factories in Europe.
They wanted to gain a clearer view of the climate change impact across their supply chain and specifically:
As a rapidly growing business, they wanted help to ensure they could deliver on their ambitions both commercially and sustainably.
innocent drinks supplies bottled juices and smoothies to supermarkets, coffee shops and various other outlets across Europe. Founded in 1998, the company aims to help people live well and die old. The brand is transparent, simple and playful.
innocent frequently engages with its consumers on sustainability issues and is a certified B Corporation. It also donates 10% of its profits to charities through its innocent foundation.
EcoAct have been instrumental in helping us work out what our climate change target should be as well as the best way to go about achieving the target. They offer a great balance between providing the cold-hard technical insight required alongside a fun, friendly and engaging way of doing things.
Help was at hand at EcoAct. We helped to calculate innocent’s supply chain carbon footprint from actual data, where available, and developed estimation methodologies where it wasn’t. To calculate emissions from fruit, “mini” Life Cycle Assessments were developed for their top 5 purchased fruits. From this, we were able to extrapolate to estimate emissions for all fruits purchased.
Once the footprint calculation was complete it enabled identification of emissions hotspots where we could focus attention for target setting and emissions reductions. Each of the hotspot areas identified were assessed according to two criteria: the ability to be influenced and how material they are for the business. This enabled us to determine a level of ambition for each emissions hotspot.
It is important for any target that contextual and market changes, such as new environmental initiatives and the effects of the grid and transport greening, are taken into account. For this, a bespoke feasibility tool was developed which enabled innocent to visualise these impacts against their new targets.
With targets set, it was time to tackle the emissions. innocent recognised the importance of a strong supplier engagement strategy as key to achieving reductions and hitting their target. To achieve this, an EcoAct consultant worked alongside innocent at their London headquarters to develop a strategy for collecting data and engaging the supply chain teams who managed the relationships with suppliers. As a result of this close partnership, the teams felt part of the process and were supported in making their specific commitments for reducing emissions within their area of the supply chain.
It seemed only right that these were publicly announced and formalised in a Paris Agreement-style ceremony at innocent HQ.
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Carbon Footprinting 
Science-based targets 
Climate Strategy 
Scope 3