Of course, hotels offer orange juice in their breakfast buffets – but not everything that is standard is necessarily sustainable. In the DACH region, for example, apple juice would be the more environmentally friendly choice. IMAGE: ©Rido | Stock.Adobe.com

Oranges suffer from climate change

Orange juice is the most popular juice in the world. In 2024, this has been much in the media as the vitamin C-rich breakfast drink has become significantly more expensive this year. A preliminary evaluation of the 2024 crop (July to September) shows that the crop was even smaller than the May forecast, which was heralded as possibly the worst crop in 30 years.

About 80 percent of the juice oranges used to make orange juice and orange juice concentrate come from Brazil. According to the Tagesschau, the reasons for the growing shortage of orange juice are as follows

• Brazil’s crop has been declining for years, and the country’s concentrate reserves are now depleted.
• The reason for the decline is climate change. The orange trees suffer from high temperatures and lack of water.
• On top of that, the citrus greening disease is on the rise in Brazil, destroying entire plantations.

Three large companies control the production of orange juice

Orange growing in Brazil is highly industrialized and in the hands of three large companies: Cutrale, Citrosuco and Louis Dreyfus. According to Fair Trade, working conditions on the plantations are precarious. Workers often work eleven hours a day and are paid less than the minimum wage.

Another problem is pesticide use. Pesticides that have long been banned in Europe because they kill bees or are potentially carcinogenic are still used in Brazil. Workers are reportedly not protected from pesticides in the workplace.

Fair trade or organic orange juice

Ökotest tested organic juices in February 2024. Fortunately, they found hardly any pesticide residues and the vitamin C content was correct. Furthermore, orange juice labeled Fairtrade was even sold in discount supermarkets (good and very good), and both Penny and Lidl actually pay the pickers a higher premium than Fairtrade.

Organic orange juices also performed well. Unfortunately, there are very few orange juices that are both Fair Trade and organic. Interestingly, both Fairtrade and organic orange juices are also often sourced from Brazil and are at least partly associated with the three large companies mentioned above (these companies state on their websites that they work with various labels). However, according to Fairtrade, their oranges “never come from large plantations” but “exclusively from Fairtrade cooperatives”.

Environmental performance of orange juice and other fruit juices

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg (ifeu) studied the environmental impact of fruit juices. One of the questions they looked at was whether not-from-concentrate juice or orange juice from concentrate had a smaller carbon footprint.

Calculating the consumption of orange juice in Germany: 

• It takes the same number of oranges to produce one liter of both juice from concentrate and juice from not-from-concentrate.
• Due to the higher mass and weight of not-from-concentrate juice, the environmental impact is (slightly) higher.
• The ecological footprint for 1 liter of not-from-concentrate orange juice is 0.72 kg CO2 equivalent.
• The ecological footprint for 1 liter of orange juice from concentrate is slightly lower at 0.69 kg CO2 equivalent.
• The best option is freshly squeezed orange juice at 0.65 kg CO2 equivalents per liter. The long transport of the oranges from Brazil to German households is responsible for the fact that the balance is not significantly better..

Apple juice is the better environmental choice in Germany

In any country, the most sustainable choice is to drink the juice of the fruit that grows in your region. In the DACH region, for example, this is apple juice. According to the ifeu Institute, the carbon footprint of apple juice is half that of orange juice.

By the way, if you drink juice from fruits that grow in your area, not-from-concentrate juice is more environmentally friendly than juice from concentrate. That’s because the energy used to produce the concentrate is saved.