Welcome Tangerine Blossom!

Imagine this. 

You’ve gotten your hands on our newest flavor: Tangerine Blossom. You close your eyes, tilt your head back, and take a looonnnggg sip. But when you open your eyes, you’re no longer at home — instead, you’re deep in the Amazon Rainforest (for legal reasons, we cannot actually claim that Tangerine Blossom has teleportation powers but just go with it). Around you are luscious flower-filled trees, streams of running water, and hundreds of peculiar brown creatures swimming under the tangerine sun. 

One of the brown creatures waddles to you and, for the purposes of this story, let’s pretend they can speak perfect English and this is totally normal and not weird at all. ‘Hello MTV’ they say, ‘welcome to my crib.’ The creature’s name is Captain. 

While Captain may look like a cross between that guinea pig that you won at the elementary school fair and a loaf of bread, they are actually a capybara — the world’s largest rodent. Like all capybaras, Captain enjoys dipping their webbed toes into lakes of sparkling water, volunteering as a living sofa for birds and monkeys, and using their endlessly growing teeth to see how many tangerines they can chomp in one minute (the answer is fourteen). And just between you and me, Captain also has a track record of eating their own poop as a way to strengthen their tiny capybara muscles. But alas, this is a safe space. We don’t judge here. 

Now here’s the sad part. As of right now, Captain’s crib and all other rainforests around South America are under drastic threat due to rapid deforestation. In fact, between 2020 and 2021 alone, over 13,235 square kilometers of rainforest were lost — that’s over 22% more than were lost just the previous year. 

But never fear, little herb, this is where you come in. 

That can of Tangerine Blossom you’re sipping is actually helping fight against the effects of deforestation happening in Captain’s home!  “But, mysterious yet talented author, how could a can of sparkling water possibly help with rainforest deforestation?” you may ask. Well, rainforests are crucial to offsetting the carbon we emit into the atmosphere through everyday activities like driving and heating our homes. When rainforests shrink, even more carbon is left hanging out in the atmosphere and the effects of global warming on environments like Captain’s rainforest get worse. So finding alternative efficient ways to offset carbon emissions is priority numero uno on our to-do list. 

That’s why we’ve decided to donate 20% of the profits from Tangerine Blossom to Friends of Trees!!! Since 1989, Friends of Trees has planted more than 870,000 trees in over 120 neighborhoods, parks, and natural areas. Once the trees are planted, volunteers water, prune, and mulch to make sure all trees grow from smol saplings to little tree-nagers (new word alert?) to healthy adults. PLUS, planting trees has proven to not only be an efficient way of minimizing the effect of deforestation, but a way of bringing together communities of human beans and getting more people involved in climate action. With the help of Friends of Trees and Tangerine Blossom (and you!), we’re helping to restore ecosystems and air quality for all the peculiar creatures that live on this weird orbital rock we call home.  

So as our lord and savior, Bob Ross, once said: “let’s build some happy little trees!”