Author: Lucy Purdy / Source: Positive News
Cola isn’t usually associated with ethical business, but one brand is going back to the drink’s roots, reimagining what a cola company can look like. Karma Cola co-founder Simon Coley explains why fizzy drinks don’t have to leave a bad taste in your mouth
Brands of Inspiration: this article has been created by Positive News and supported by Karma Cola
Among the ingredients listed on cans of Karma Cola is ‘natural cola flavour’. So you use real cola, from cola nuts?
That’s right. Cola is known throughout the world but usually no connection is made to the fact that it’s a plant, not just a synthetic flavour. It has been used for thousands of years in folk medicine and rituals.
The Karma Cola Foundation gives money back to the village in Sierra Leone where the cola for your drinks is grown. You established this right at the beginning; why?
Because it makes it possible for us to live up to our name: to ensure a karmic relationship between the communities that produce the cola nuts we use, and consumers.
Back in 2010 we made our first few bottles of Karma Cola using a bag of cola nuts sent to us by our friends in Boma, a small village in the Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone. We’d learned that the world drinks more than a million colas a minute but none of the money went back to the people who originally discovered the stuff.
So we made a drink to fix that.So, is this just about sending cheques to the other side of the world?
Not at all. We wanted the people themselves…
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