You might recognize this iconic juice box
from Chinese supermarkets.
Its brand has become known as
“childhood in a box”
for Chinese communities around the world.
In Hong Kong alone,
people drink 150 million gallons of Vitasoy drinks each year.
That’s over 200 Olympic-sized pools,
which means Vitasoy’s home base operations in Hong Kong is
massive.
Vitasoy was born in Hong Kong in the 1940s.
The brand is known for its lemon tea,
inspired by the lemon tea of Hong Kong’s diners,
and another classic staple: soy milk.
By the 1960s,
Vitasoy had a 25 percent share
of the Hong Kong soft drinks market,
second only to Coca-Cola.
This meant packaging their glass-bottle drinks
into cardboard tetra-paks,
extending their shelf life to six months.
In recent years,
Vitasoy has also found a growing market in mainland China,
which now accounts for 69 percent of their profit,
compared to just 20 percent a decade ago.
Vitasoy’s Lemon Tea fandom is so big in China
that there are memes about the drink
giving a better high than smoking weed.
But its popularity comes at a cost.
An environmental activist group estimates
that 74 percent of cartons in Hong Kong’s landfills
come from Vitasoy products.
And recycling drink cartons, an expensive and difficult process,
happens at a rate of nearly zero percent in Hong Kong.
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