Australian social enterprise Juice For Good, recently celebrated its first year in operation, having saved one million oranges from being wasted through its juice vending machines.
The start-up has just launched a range of limited edition designer cups in collaboration with street artist Joel Moore to mark the occasion.
“We’ve been running Juice For Good for 12 months and wanted to mark its 1st birthday with some exciting new cup designs that we’re releasing in summer. We reached out to Joel Moore as we loved his style and paintings of various fruits and fun characters. We hope our customers love them too!” said Louise Tran, head of Purposeful Marketing at For Purpose Co.
Tran shared an insight into the Juice for Good journey with Inside FMCG.
Inside FMCG: Tell us how Juice For Good started.
Louise Tran: Nearly half of all Aussie-grown fruit and vegetables doesn’t make it off the farm due to imperfect skin or size, resulting in significant levels of food waste and loss of income for growers. For PurposeCo. the innovation arm of OzHarvest, identified imperfect and blemished oranges were going to waste when they were perfectly edible and ripe for use. The challenge was to find a use for these oranges that didn’t rely on their visual appeal. What better way to use oranges than turning them into fresh juice delivered directly to the consumer? This was the beginning of Juice For Good in September 2018!
Inside FMCG: Tell us about your food waste advocacy.
LT: We were so proud to have launched Juice For Good, Australia’s first fresh orange juice vending machine that uses “blemished” and normally “unloved” oranges to provide a delicious, healthy, alternative drink option to products currently available from vending machines around Sydney.
While consumers can enjoy our delicious product which is 100% orange juice with nothing else added, we also aim to educate them with messaging on the vending machines around food waste in Australia.
OzHarvest has annual campaigns encouraging consumers to take action and change their own behaviour around reducing food waste including a Fight Food Waste campaign. Ozharvest.org has information on the campaigns and provides top tips on reducing food waste in the home!
Juice For Good is the first social enterprise business set up by OzHarvest’s innovation arm, For PurposeCo. [It} exists to generate sustainable revenue streams for OzHarvest and bring ideas that create social impact on life, with profits going to OzHarvest. Juice For Good is the first of many more ideas in the pipeline.
Inside FMCG: Where do you source the oranges?
LT: Our blemished oranges are sourced from a number of local farmers in NSW including, Dural, Windsor, Central Coast, Griffith. We are proud to support local Aussie farmers, directly purchasing these unloved oranges that take farmers the same amount of energy, water, resources, labour and love to grow as the “perfect” ones.
Inside FMCG: How many vending machines are you targeting in 2020?
LT: We currently have 50 machines in NSW, and we are aiming to have 100 Juice For Good machines in locations by the end of 2020.
