Earthly Woes
Creating a climate-friendly product
Have you ever seen NBC’s hit sitcom The Good Place? For three seasons, Kristen Bell’s character Eleanor attempts to become a better person, after getting hit by a car, dying, and accidently ending up in “the good place” when she should have ended up in the errr… not so good place (she wasn’t the nicest human while alive). It’s a whimsical show that at its core is about ethics and how to do the right thing (if you haven’t seen it and want to, skip down to ‘Building a ‘boocha brand, because our point includes a bit of a spoiler)!
Eventually, the characters in the Good Place realize they’re not actually in the Good Place; in fact, nobody has died and gone to “the good place” in over 500 years. Reason being? They find out that every seemingly good deed on Earth seems to come with negative consequences, too.
You buy your mother flowers for her birthday, for instance, but now the field where the flowers came from is depleted of nutrients and the worker picking the flowers wasn’t paid a fair wage, and so on. Your good deed ends up costing you points, that in the game of life, could make your good deed do more harm than good. Frustrating!
Building a ‘boocha brand
We’ve fallen into many of the same conundrums on our quest to create a high-quality kombucha drink. In founding a kombucha start-up, our goal has always been to help people, and ideally the community and environment in which we live. We want to brew a delicious drink that helps support the health and fitness goals of our customers. If you resist that too-late-in-the-day coffee or that gin and tonic you didn’t really want anyway at the bar (and instead have a kombucha!) we’re doing our job right.
We also want to do our part to help the environment, because if you’re not trying to help the environment in 2024, is there any point in what you’re doing? As a teeny-tiny startup (at least at the start!) we’ve found some great challenges in our ability to always choose the most sustainable options. For example, sometimes the locally-sourced product we want to use would make our kombucha three times the price, unless we buy enough for tens of thousands of cans. The good news here is that as we expand, we’ll be able to keep leveling up our sustainability and invest in the most sustainable ingredients and production means for our products. We’re looking forward to sharing our impact updates with you here as we continue on this journey.
Here’s a few of our sustainability commitments we’re starting with now:
Better Bottles
Or technically, cans. Cans aren’t perfect, but they recycle better than their rivals. 100 percent of our can is recyclable, compared to 71 percent of plastic bottles, plus when recycled, they take less energy to break down than glass. We’ve also jet-printed our label, meaning there’s no plastic label to tear off before recycling! Cans are also lighter to transport than glass bottles, saving energy along the way. We also use a canning company that has made creating a better-for-Earth can a priority. Click here for their most recent sustainability report.
Local Ingredients
Whenever possible, we work with regionally based farmers to source ingredients. Stay tuned on our social media platforms for future tours of some of these local farms!
Candor
In the spirit of our eponymous brand name, we think it’s important for customers to truly understand what’s in the products they buy and where those products come from. We’ll be introducing you to the story behind our ingredients along the way, but also helping you choose products that are candid about their impact.
As we update our impact plans and goals, we’ll let you know on our blog and through social media. Follow us on Instagram/Tiktok @candidkombucha or enter your email below to receive newsletter updates. Got an idea for us? Simply pop it in the comments box below. We look forward to growing this kombucha brand together.
Further Reading
If you’re interested in learning more about ethically choosing your food and drinks, Avocado Anxiety by Louise Gray is a great place to start.
