Overview
Key results
Identification and evaluation of four potential carbon removal project concepts for implementation within The Wonderful Company’s value chain
Risk analysis of the carbon removal project concepts against key categories, including: credit generation, insetting potential, harms and benefits, constraints, market volatility, and implementation challenges
Policy analysis of the carbon removal project concepts to determine how federal and regional policies may influence project concept feasibility in the long term
About The Wonderful Company
The Wonderful Company, co-founded and co-led by Lynda and Stewart Resnick, is a privately held $6 billion enterprise that grows, bottles, packages, and markets iconic global brands, including FIJI Water, POM Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios, Wonderful Halos, JUSTIN, Lewis Cellars, and Landmark wines.
The Wonderful Company is a global leader in pistachios and almonds production, America’s largest citrus grower, and one of the country's biggest producers of mandarins, seedless lemons, and pomegranates. It is a market leader in premium wines, bottled water, and pomegranate juice, and owns Teleflora, the world’s largest flower delivery service.
Of more than $2.5 billion invested in corporate social responsibility and philanthropy efforts by the company and the Resnicks, over $1.3 billion has been invested in environmental sustainability initiatives to help fight climate change in California’s Central Valley, Fiji, and around the world.
Reducing The Wonderful Company’s carbon footprint now, and setting a blueprint for a sustainable future, couldn’t be more imperative. We engaged Carbon Direct to meet this challenge head on.
Steven Swartz
Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chief Technology Officer, The Wonderful Company
In the face of a rapidly changing climate, environmental sustainability is at the center of The Wonderful Company’s work. As one of the largest agriculture companies in the United States, The Wonderful Company is embedding water-efficient and restorative practices across all their operations to be both a responsible environmental steward and a forward-looking sustainability leader.
As of 2024, The Wonderful Company has invested $400 million in water-efficient irrigation practices, eco-friendly pest control, and creative ways to reduce energy use; diverted 500 million pounds of waste from landfills each year; and used 20% less water to grow each pound of pistachios with their patented Wonderful Pistachio Rootstock. Looking ahead to 2025, its sustainability goals include:
Power 100% of all U.S. operations with renewable electricity, from orchards to offices
Transition all PET beverage bottles for the FIJI Water and POM Wonderful brands to 100% recycled PET (rPET)
Advance water banking programs in California to safeguard against future droughts and protect wetland habitats
The challenge: reducing and removing agricultural emissions
To help achieve these goals and minimize its carbon footprint, The Wonderful Company is exploring project-based opportunities to reduce and remove agricultural emissions. The Wonderful Company selected Carbon Direct to develop a project mapping analysis of four potential carbon projects based on available methodologies and suitability for the voluntary carbon market.
“It’s important that we take the same care that we put into crafting our iconic healthy products to support our communities and ecosystems,” says Ilia Florentin, Associate Vice President, Sustainability Strategy Lead at The Wonderful Company. “We chose to work with Carbon Direct on exploring new, innovative carbon projects because of their scientific excellence and their proven record of delivering carbon, community, and ecosystem benefits.”
Forward-looking climate leaders raising the bar for carbon management want to ensure that any carbon project that they are involved in—either as a buyer or developer—is best in class. This means that they must meet specific, science-based quality benchmarks. These include: social harms, benefits, and environmental justice; environmental harms and benefits; additionality and baselines; measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification; durability; and leakage.
Learn more: Get the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal ->
The solution: evaluating the feasibility of carbon projects
To help scope a high-potential carbon project for The Wonderful Company, Carbon Direct identified and evaluated four potential concepts. The four concepts were identified based on academic research, interviews with agronomic staff, and proprietary data from The Wonderful Company.
Carbon Direct scientists evaluated each project concept across six risk categories:
Credit generation: Estimated potential for each project to generate carbon credits, modeled using the most appropriate carbon crediting methodology
Insetting potential: Evaluated the opportunity to mitigate company emissions versus generate carbon credits
Environmental harms and benefits: Reviewed project impacts beyond carbon removal such as effects on biodiversity, soil health, and water resources
Constraints: Assessed limitations that could affect project feasibility or scalability, such as regulatory constraints, land use restrictions, and resource availability
Market volatility: Evaluated potential fluctuations in carbon credit prices, demand, and other changes in relevant markets
Implementation challenges: Assessed ease of project execution considering factors such as technical complexity, logistical issues, and maintenance needs
In addition to the risk analysis, Carbon Direct further stress-tested these concepts by analyzing project baselines and methodologies, and quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using best-fit methodology approaches. Altogether, the complexity of these analyses required numerous data points, including: biomass accumulation graphs from The Wonderful Company and regional farms; a regulatory and policy review; common practice analyses from regional farms; emissions outputs from fertilizer, fossil fuels, and other inputs; water availability and costs in California; renewable energy availability and costs in California; and geospatial data from potential project regions.
“The depth of Carbon Direct’s analysis surpassed our expectations and greatly enhanced our decision-making process,” says Steven Swartz, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chief Technology Officer at The Wonderful Company. “Not only did they demonstrate clearly which projects are viable and why—they expanded the focus of our approach to emissions reductions and carbon removals as a whole.”
The role of policy in determining project design
As a part of developing and analyzing project concepts, Carbon Direct reviewed major policy frameworks within the United States and California that may influence project concept designs and feasibility in the long term. These include the recent Principles for Responsible Participation in the Voluntary Carbon Markets and the Growing Climate Solutions Act at the federal level, and the California Cap-and-Trade Program at the state level. Carbon Direct believes understanding and monitoring the policy landscape over time will help The Wonderful Company safeguard against any additionality risk, and unlock further benefits in support of climate change mitigation and adaptation activities.
Learn more about climate policy services at Carbon Direct ->
What’s next: activating carbon projects in the value chain
Looking ahead, The Wonderful Company will continue to analyze emissions across all business units and value chain stages to identify key emission hotspots, as well as reduction and removal strategies.
“As a part of our broader climate action plan, we are evaluating intervention opportunities throughout our operations to reduce and remove our emissions with a scientifically proven approach,” says Swartz. “Working with Carbon Direct has helped us to identify which projects are feasible, actionable, and impactful in meeting The Wonderful Company’s climate goals.”