Most sodas in plastic bottles have refined sugar/sweeteners and are owned by Coca-Cola, Pepsi (owned by the world’s biggest user of palm oil) and Red Bull (which funds spinal injury tests on rats (having their backs crushed, then forced to climb stairs with their arms – some even have their heads cut off). A reason to support humane medical research.
Avoid caffeine (cola etc) for pregnancy/nursing or affected medical conditions. Or before you go to sleep! Check medication before consuming grapefruit or rhubarb.
Campaigners want a deposit return scheme (similar to Germany) as soda bottles are among the most littered items, and break into microplastics and wash out to sea.
England has around 41 items of litter per kilometre, with Coca-Cola, Red Bull and Lucozade bottles the common culprits. It’s thought the latter is due to runners throwing away bottles when finished.
Natural Fruit Sodas from East London
Square Root is an East London soda brand, founded by two university friends (a biologist and a chemist) to create grownup flavours of popular sodas but all made locally with natural ingredients. Orders are sent in glass bottles in cardboard packaging, with free delivery over £25 and a speedy service on regular subscription orders.
This company is so obsessed with fruit that it measures their staff in lemons (the tallest member is 32.2 lemon tall!) The company is careful to source most fruit locally (it has a rhubarb from the Yorkshire triangle, strawberries from the same place as Wimbledon and also takes care to carefully source fruit not possible to grow in England – say from a known Sicilian farmer for its lemons).
You can also get discounts on regular orders by building up ‘pop points’ or refer a friend to earn £5 off your next order. If subscribing online, you can just order a box of your favourite flavour, or try the pick ‘n’ mix selection. The range (also in cans) sold includes:
- Lemonade is a traditional drink popular in Victorian London, made with simple mix of lemons, carbonated water and sugar. Also as raspberry lemonade.
- Lime & Lemongrass features fresh Persian limes and fragrance lemongrass, with British beet sugar.
- Citrus Crush is an Italian-style blend of blood orange & pink grapefruit soda.
- Ginger Beer features natural spicy flavours from four dark & light sugars blended with fresh squeezed lemon juice. With less sugar than most brands, store cans on their heads for best flavour.
- Cola is more like the kind of traditional cola enjoyed in Victorian times, this one is made with raw cane sugar, organic essential oils plus fresh-squeezed lemon and lime juice.
- Iced tea lemonade is a natural pick-me-up with 10 times more tea than the major brand. All it contains is tea, lemon, sugar and carbonated water. Sold in a ring-pull bottle.
- Booze-free drinks like gin and tonic, and mojitos. Avoid tonic water for pregnancy/nursing and some medical conditions, due to quinine.
Sparkling Water Sodas with Real Fruits
We always hear about corporate business and big brands being unethical, but they’re boring! The whole point about local and artisan is that things are original and fun and quirky. Dalstons make ‘sodas with soul’ in pretty cans. Made with real fruit and ‘nothing weird’. Flavours include:
- Cherry
- Elderflower
- Rhubarb
- Lemon
- Peach
- Ginger beer
Bubbly Botanical Sodas from Northumberland
Fentimans (Northumberland) makes botanically-brewed drinks in glass bottles or cans. Often sold in pubs, most contains a little ginger. The company also sells tonic waters (including a low-calorie version).
Flavours include:
- Elderflower rose tonic
- Sparkling elderflower
- Victorian & raspberry lemonade
- Ginger beer & pink ginger
- Curiosity & cherry cola
- Dandelion & burdock
- Lemon shandy
Local Fruit Sodas (with foraged ingredients)
Idyll Drinks are unique, in that are made with locally-sourced fruit and wild foraged ingredients. And 5p from every zero waste can is donated to a rewilding charity. Government is always telling us to support our local farmers, and switching from the big brands to small artisan brands like this one, is a wonderful way to do just that.
The range includes:
Wild Gooseberry pairs berries from a regenerative Essex farm with South African wild rooibos from the Rare Tea Company.
Wild Apple makes use of our abundance of apple orchards, adding cider vinegar from Herefordshire, and an infusion of sweet woodruff and hogweed seeds (two wild botanicals that blend well with apple). The taste is like ‘apple infused with warming spices, orange zest – and a hint of hay!’
Wild Rhubarb is a nice low-calorie alternative to huge helpings of rhubarb crumble (good too!) This is a refreshing take on the classic cream soda drink, this time blended with rhubarb with meadowsweet (a wild botanical), with a hint of vanilla.
Pine Forest is made from Douglas fir and Scots Pine. Who ever thought of drinking a Christmas tree, but there you go! This is nice as an alternative to tonic water with your favourite gin, or serve in a whisky highball. Or just on it own. At Christmas!
Cherry Americano is a boozy soda made with sustainable English vermouth, along with black cherry, meadow vermouth, birch bark, almond and sparkling water.
Sparkling Botanical Drinks from the Cotswolds
Nuisance Drinks is an artisan brand of sparkling botanical drinks in zero waste tins, hailing from the beautiful Cotswolds (England’s largest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). These flavours are quite unique, inspired by the founder and his mother, spending summers foraging for stinging nettles, in order to make homemade cordial.
If foraging, always leave foods for wildlife. Nettles in particular are often home to baby ladybirds (which look like mini alligators). If you see any, leave off and return in a few weeks, once they’ve grown up and left home!
1% of sales from this brand go to rewilding projects, which help to foster natural homes for native species like beavers.
The range includes:
- Rhubarb ginger
- Mint Cucumber Chilli
- Bramble Rosemary
- Nettle Elderflower
- Pink grapefruit and basil
Unique Sustainable Sodas from Scotland
Rapscallion Soda (Scotland) is a unique team that make lovely sodas. Nearly all soft drinks are made with cheap commercial shortcut ingredients, but this company uses raw quality fruit and are naturally low in calories, due to the natural sweetness of the fruit.
They are also sweetened naturally with a little raw cane sugar. Each year, they offer seasonal sodas (these change by availability due to the weather – it’s Scotland!)
- Cranachan (raspberries and ‘cream’)
- Strawberry
- Rhubarb
- Blueberry
- Dry Lime
- Burnt Lemon
- Ginger Ninja
Organic Fair Trade Cola (and more)
Karma Drinks was first created to offer an organic Fair Trade cola (including a low-calorie one sweetened with natural stevia) to help farmers in Sierra Leone, who don’t get much money from the big brands.
It now also offers other drinks like lemonade, raspberry lemonade, orangeade and gingerella. Widely sold, they are also sold widely at vegan fast food outlets, as the fizzy drink choice.
Better Immune-Boosting Lemonades
Gunna is a fresh new brand of ‘better made lemonades’, made with real lemons, immune-supporting vitamins and far less sugar. Packed in aluminium can and made in a green factory, what’s not to love? And their lemonades beat all the others, in blind taste tests. The bottles are also in metal packaging.
Sweetened with stevia, the range includes classic and raspberry lemonade, plus tropical versions (mango or pineapple/lime).
Classic Natural Sodas in Cans
Steep Soda Co offers canned natural sodas, choose from lemonade, cola or ginger beer, orange, lime cucumber or hibiscus lemonade (not for pregnancy).
Plus seasonal flavours like pear or rhubarb.
Thirst-Quenching Soda Drinks
Quenched Fruit Sodas contain bicarbonate of soda to quench your thirst, in a range of natural fruit sodas. In slim cans, choose from lime & soda, orange & soda or blackcurrant & soda, all sold in easy-to-recycle cans.