Tropicana OJ & Saving Rainforest
Tropicana - Rescue the Rainforest
I noticed on our Tropicana orange juice carton yesterday that there is a little promotion at the top that if you enter a code online you can save 100 square feet of rainforest. I really wish they just did this automatically when you purchased one of their orange juices, because we have been buying about one a week. I’m not sure how long this promotion has been going on but it runs until the end of this year. If you buy Tropicana, check the top of the carton for the promotion and go to their website and enter your code and you can save rainforest and I think it even enters you into a contest for some eco-friendly prizes.
According to Tropicana they’ve saved 24,318,700 sq. feet of rain forest so far. They are doing this in partnership with Cool Earth who buys land that would be sold for logging or ranching and they put into a local trust that employs local people to protect it. You can also donate money to Cool Earth itself to save part of the rainforest. According to their site if you donate $50-70 you can save 1/2 acre or rainforest which keeps 130 tons of CO2 in the rainforest.
Tropicana also has other environmental intiatives including being part of the Carton Council that promotes recycling cartons. In Louisville, you can put your cartons in with the rest of the recycling that the city picks up and they are then separated and recycled (check to see if your city recycles cartons here). They have also analyzed their carbon footprint to see where they need to improve things and have found that most of the carbon they create is from fertilizer. According to their website they are exploring these five areas to help improve their carbon footprint – “Agriculture Practices, Packaging Material, Quantity & Re-Use, Sourcing Locations, Thermal & Electrical Efficiencies, Transportation methods to market.”
I’m sure it is up for debate as to whether companies like this are doing enough to improve things, and it would be nice if you didn’t have to enter codes onto websites for their initiatives to happen. But, it is good to see a company this big taking an active hand in helping the environment and trying to reduce their carbon footprint. From now on when we buy Tropicana orange juice, we will be entering our codes online to help save rainforest and let Tropicana know that their green initiatives are worthwhile and consumers appreciate it.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 10:58 am and is filed under Going Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
April 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Pretty cool…too bad I never buy orange juice. But I agree that they should do that whether or not you enter the code! Steph, you need to give me a call, I believe your phone is dead, and Amy and I have 2 important questions to ask you about our childhood.
April 6th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I don’t buy orange juice either. But I might get some, just so I can enter the code and help out!
The Cool Earth site looks well done… I’ll delve into it in more detail later. I might even contribute to save some rainforest. The site says 1 acre would offset the annual carbon footprint of 10 British families!
April 6th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Hmm,my first inclination was to be skeptical, but it sounds like they are actually doing some good things. At least they aren’t just buying “carbon offsets” like some big companies. That really annoys me. And it seems like they are helping people out too, which is cool because usually Americans think we need to kick people out of the rainforest to save it. So I’m impressed. Now where do those oranges come from? Probs Florida.
April 7th, 2009 at 4:59 am
There was a good chapter in a book I just read which explained why even when Brazil is trying to protect the rainforest, it still gets cut down. Brazil limits the amount of area and the number of trees someone can log, but then there’s no one there to actually check the number that got cut. So someone applies for a permit to log 100, and they actually cut down 1000. And there was some other explanation as well, which had to do with people needing to make a living. I sure hope this helps.
April 7th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Lyndsey – What book did you read about the rainforest and would you recommend it? I’m always looking for new, good books to read.
Amy – I had the same initial reaction as you. I was waiting to see if you would have anything negative to say about it, that I didn’t catch. But it actually does seem like they are really trying to make a difference and it’s not just lip service.
April 7th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Stephanie, the book is called You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet, by Thomas M. Kostigen.
I highly recommend it. I’ve been meaning to blog a review/recommendation. Any day now.
April 7th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Hi Stephanie,
I just finished the book review.
http://strugglingtobegreen.com/you-are-here-exposing-the-vital-link-between-what-we-do-and-what-that-does-to-our-planet/
April 8th, 2009 at 5:49 am
Yeah, I didn’t look into it a whole lot. I perused the website and it does seem that they aren’t paying a whole lot of attention to human dimensions, I would be interested to learn more about the local communities they are working with. There is just so much involved in these environmental fights, especially when it comes to dealing with countries in the Global south. It especially becomes problematic because the same people that are crying about the rainforest in the US are the people that are continuing to consume products that may contribute to the rainforest diminishing. But I also think that we need to be happy when companies really do look like they are examining issues more than superficially.
April 8th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Hi,
I don’t normally drink Tropicana and don’t feel like giving them my info for the one box I ended up with.
Here is what looks to be the code if someone would like to enter it who has already signed up on the website.
#Q1WTOZFY34Y
I wonder if anyone has considered just going to the store and writing down all of the codes on display and then logging them in?
April 8th, 2009 at 8:12 am
HCC – Thanks, I just entered the code on their website, if anyone else does not want to mess with it and wants to send me their codes feel free and I will enter them. It is silly, they make you set up an account with them which you have to provide your email address (I’m not sure if this means i’ll start getting emails from them).
Amy-I agree with you, but at least they are working with a charity who probably does know more about the human aspect than Tropicana themselves. I am glad they paired up with someone else to actually do the work, and the charity did talk about the human aspect on their website and giving people jobs that they would otherwise get from logging or farming.
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:14 pm
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September 28th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
BUY MORE OJ!!!