- November 30, 2015
- 11:20 am
- John Caltagirone
- no comments
Stevia – Sweet and Sustainable
What you eat impacts not only your health but also the global carbon, water and farmer livelihoods
Summary: Have you thought that what you eat impacts not only your health but can also potentially drive down the planets carbon and water footprint? In fact you can be a source to potentially enhance the lives of farmers in regions as far as Kenya, Ecuador, Paraguay, China, and India. Stevia– a natural, 0 calorie sweetener is one such exciting ingredient revolutionizing the sweetening industry and PureCircle is the global leader pioneering in its growth.
Stevia – A sustainable sweetener
Stevia is a natural, no-calorie sweetener that provides a great tasting, mainstream replacement for caloric sweeteners. The key sweetening agents in the stevia leaf are steviol glycosides, which can be 200 to 350 times sweeter than sugar and have the potential to greatly lower environmental impacts of food and beverage products. PureCircle is pioneering the next generation of Stevia- Stevia 3.0™ – that, with its improved taste profiles, greater customer acceptance, and positive environmental and social eco-system impacts, will allow stevia to be the sustainable mass scale sweetener of choice in the 21st Century. Food and beverage manufacturers today face pressure to reduce calories; stevia can be a solution to not only reduce added sugar (and High Fructose Corn Syrup) and calories in food and beverage products, but also drive to reduce carbon and water footprints.
PureCircle’s Vision and Sustainability
It has been PureCircle’s vision to lead the global expansion of stevia as the next mass volume natural sweetener because of its potential to positively impact public health. As the industry leader developing an entirely new category of sweeteners, PureCircle understands the importance of integrating sustainability into its supply chain from farm to extraction and purification stages. It starts with helping farmers become increasingly successful by increasing yields and incomes by providing quality seedling or cuttings, as well as materials and agronomic know-how to successfully cultivate stevia plants and providing microfinance support of up to a million dollars and free materials to get farmers started. Converting plant waste into organic fertilizer to not only reduce wast, but reduce emissions is another way PureCircle has embedded sustainability from farming to manufacturing. The impacts of these activities are shown in the carbon and water footprint that PureCircle conducts periodically. The findings reveal that PureCircle stevia has a carbon footprint up to 80% lower and water footprint 96% lower than published benchmarks from other natural mainstream sweeteners like beet, cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and other stevia sweeteners.
Low impact, great tasting ingredients can make the difference
The food and drink industry is increasingly under pressure to provide great tasting, low calorie, and environmentally friendly options. Incorporating stevia instead of natural caloric sweeteners is one powerful way for food and beverage manufacturers to reduce their environmental impact while developing great tasting, naturally sweetened options. PureCircle understands the impact it can provide and have set targets to drive down food & beverage industry’s carbon emissions by 1 million metric tons, water consumption by 2 trillion liters, and calories by 13 trillion by 2020.
To learn more about how we are pioneering the growth of stevia as the mainstream sustainable sweetener of choice, please go here.
Ajay Chandran is the Corporate Sustainability Director at PureCircle and leads the company’s award winning sustainability program. Ajay has more than 20 years of global experience at leading B2B companies across diverse industries and holds an MBA from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.