Sunny Delight Beverages Co. (SDBC), Cincinnati, released its fifth annual sustainability report, which showcases the company’s progress toward its sustainability goals. During 2012, SDBC completed an $85 million state-of-the-art reinvention project aimed at improving every SDBC plant and product, enabling it to realize the efficiency, sustainability and economic benefits of its largest initiative ever, it says.

"We are proud of our sustainability achievements to date, but it is a journey without end," said Billy Cyr, president and chief executive officer of SDBC, in a statement. "While we do not have all the answers to the issues covered in our latest report, we want to be part of the solution wherever we can. We are committed to sustainability and we will continue to listen, learn and lead in this arena."

The report also notes that the company further reduced the average number of calories in each beverage serving by 48 percent from 92 calories in 2007 to 48 today, removing 174 billion calories from the American diet.

Other key reductions from company baselines include the following improvements: per-unit, non-product-related water use is down 3 percent; per-unit energy use has been reduced by 17 percent; per-unit carbon footprint is down 10 percent; packaging materials are down nearly 24 million pounds; and all SDBC plants continue to send zero waste to landfills, the company reports.

The company also boosted its distribution efficiency by shipping more than 90 percent of its volume in full truckloads and nearly 98 percent in fuel-efficient carriers, it says.

On a charitable front, the company contributed nearly $1.4 million in monetary and product donations to nearly 50 national and local organizations, in addition to the SunnyD Book Spree's donation of nearly 238,000 classroom books for a total book donation of more than 800,000 since 2007 with an estimated retail value of $4.7 million.