Do beverages have footprints? You bet your pinky toes they do.

As with any product, manufacturing, packaging and delivering Silk affects the environment in a variety of ways. Collectively, this series of decisions and impacts can be called the product’s environmental footprint.

From the start, Silk has been committed to offering products that are not only nutritious for people, but good for the whole planet. So we undertook a “life cycle assessment” to generate some solid numbers about our impact on the environment—to measure our environmental footprint and find ways we can work to make it smaller.

As of this writing, the analysis is under review by independent experts to be sure it meets international quality-control standards. But in early 2011 we announced some extraordinary preliminary findings: that the production, use and disposal of Silk Original soy beverage (1.89 liter) sold in the U.S. generates 65% fewer greenhouse gases and uses a quarter of the water needed for the same amount of vitamin D dairy milk sold in the U.S. Per household, that amounts to saving the environment 53,000 liters of water per year.

Good enough? Not for Silk! We’re proud of our good work so far, but we know it’s just the beginning. That’s why we’ve already begun using the study to identify areas where we can further reduce carbon emission and water consumption. Stay tuned for more!