Lemonaid

Lemonaid is an organic soft-drink brand launched in Hamburg in 2009 as a social business. Its drinks are made from fair-trade, organically grown ingredients with noticeably less sugar than conventional sodas, and a fixed amount from every bottle sold goes to the Lemonaid & ChariTea Foundation, which has channeled millions of euros into development projects in the growing regions the ingredients come from.

The company sources directly from smallholder cooperatives in countries such as Paraguay, Mexico and Sri Lanka, paying premiums above fair-trade minimums. Its sister brand ChariTea applies the same model to iced teas, and both are sold in returnable glass bottles.

Lemonaid became an unlikely symbol of food-regulation absurdity when German authorities objected that it contained too little sugar to legally be called a "Limonade" — a dispute the company turned into a campaign for honest ingredients. It remains independent and Hamburg-based, with availability concentrated in Europe's organic and café trade rather than every supermarket shelf.