Pulp Friction

The miracle—and challenge—that is the American grocery business can be captured with a visit to the orange juice section. The choices are, depending on your point of view, either fabulous or ridiculous: juice from concentrate or not from concentrate. Sold in a variety of quantities in paper cartons or in plastic jugs. Fortified every which way and, of course, offered in a full range of pulp options.

And that's just the "fresh" juice section. Across the store, in the frozen foods aisle, is another whole stockpile, the frozen concentrated options. At the Sudbury Farms in Needham, I counted 5 varieties of orange juice on the shelves, and that was without distinguishing by brand. Catering to every niche, the manufacturers vie for shelf space, leading ultimately to ever-larger stores.

A little green consumer philosophy could change this dispersed demand. At the Green Guide, we recently looked at the range of orange juice options with an eye to determining the greenest choice. Here are the factors we considered:

1. Natural resources involved. Organics beat the others hands-down. Tests have shown pesticide residue in the juice from conventional orchards, and one can assume that the growers and their lands are exposed to harmful chemicals.

2. Manufacturing process. For all goods, the energy and waste of manufacturing is a key to determining how "green" the product is. For OJ, however, it's simply a mystery. Plant managers and academic experts we interviewed told us that so many different orange juice products are created simultaneously in the plants that energy costs can't be broken out. Simple logic would suggest that the juice that has not been concentrated at any point would be the most efficient to produce, but we could not document that theory.

3. Packaging. The paper for the cartons involves trees and a particularly energy-intensive and polluting manufacturing process. The plastic jugs, while offering the virtue of recycling potential, are made from a dwindling resource, oil, and will not biodegrade. The upshot is, the smaller the better: The frozen concentrate packages are the greenest.

4. Transportation costs. Frozen concentrate wins big here, too. The heavier the item, the more energy it takes to truck it around. And we checked to see if it uses more fuel to run a freezer truck vs. a refrigerator truck: the answer was yes, but a marginal amount.

5. Nutrients preserved. The surprise here was that frozen concentrate had the edge, though just by a little bit. Of the various nutrients in OJ, vitamin C is the most volatile, and keeping the juice frozen apparently helps preserve it.

Our orange juice analysis won't change the world. But it will, we hope, serve to offer a new way of thinking about purchases. The nutrients are specific to foods, but the other factors can apply to almost any product. And, while we did a lot of reporting to verify our facts, a little logic will lead you to the same conclusions. Try looking at the next thing you buy with an eye toward its green qualities. And, unless you're squeezing it yourself, buy your orange juice in the frozen foods aisle.