Several things define Cincinnati: the four-way (Greek-style cinnamon and clove-spiced chili heaped on spaghetti); the Reds, who have decided to play baseball after years of dormancy; and Proctor and Gamble, along with its spin-off, Sunny Delight. Now marketed as SunnyD, the citrus-like beverage nets over US$700 million a year in sales.
SunnyD defines being an Armenian-American, too. Our grandmother, who prepped, baked, and cooked food for hours a day, apparently could not give the same attention to Sunny Delight, so it was a fixture in her refrigerator. When you are making choerag and kuftas all day, OJ was not high on the list. I doubt any of us have touched it in years. By the way, more than one Armenian family has shared this story! The beverage is hardly the elixir of food snobs, but it is not going anywhere.
The brand has had its share of ups and downs. It hit the British market like a hurricane in the 1990s, becoming the third highest selling drink behind Coke and Pepsi. Then the negative press slapped it silly: the drink, after all, is only 5% real juice. Cries of outrage were heard when a toddler began to resemble an
oopma-loompa after drinking too much Sunny Delight, though in fairness, that was hardly P&G’s fault—would that be the parents’ fault? Alas, sales plummeted, the drink was renamed, and even reformulated. Now its parent company,
Sunny Delight Beverages Company, is joining the sustainability parade: its bottling plants followed the zero waste route, and made other environmental strides as well.
The company has reached its 2013 recycling goal
three years early; earlier this year, Sunny Delight’s US and Spain manufacturing plants achieved zero waste. Back in 2007, the company estimated that it sent about 1140 tons of waste to landfills. That number fell more than 50% two years later, and by implementing policies like
paperless offices, all factories hit that goal. By diverting waste from landfills, Sunny Delight
saved $169,000 in such costs last year.
Sunny Delight’s corporate social responsibility initiatives go beyond waste elimination. It set its carbon footprint reduction goal to 25% in 2011. Along the way, it
decreased its energy consumption 6% in 2009, and reduced water usage by 8%. The company also improved its transportation and logistics systems, and shrank the size of its products’ packaging on average of about 20%, cutting energy costs and decreasing waste along the way.
Privately-owned companies are generally reticent to release any information related to its finances or operations, so Sunny Delight’s first sustainability report is a much-welcomed step. Its report followed Global Reporting Initiative guidelines and is available
here. Whether you will want to pair it with that organic vodka in your freezer is another matter.
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