Of course, there isn’t any noticeable mention of the brand’s sale to The Coca-Cola Company in 2001 for $181 million. That fact doesn’t even come up in the About Odwalla section at the bottom of the company’s press releases, found in the site’s News section.

But no matter. The cartoony mountains and bright green rolling hills that make up the background of Odwalla’s website, odwalla.com, is all you need to see to know that the company is doing everything it can to continually project an image of Earth friendliness. A few pieces of fruit bounce on the home page and lead you to other areas of the site whenever anything is clicked on, bouncing merrily from one spot to another and then settling down so as not to distract from the total experience.

In the initial Who We Are section, the brand spends extra time showcasing all that it has done for the Earth. The site says that it has always been governed by three principles:
• Make great juice.
• Do good things for the community.
• Build a business with heart.

Those community-oriented activities include such things as recycling, using recycled materials, giving to charities, using “green” energy sources, using locally grown produce, keeping waste to a minimum, and using environmentally friendly cleaning practices.

The site uses Flash technology well, particularly with rollover text. All of those environmentally friendly items (and more!) from the previous paragraph can be found on a page describing the company’s view on community service which also contains a slew of icons to roll your cursor over and access further details.

When it comes to searching the site for the company’s beverages and bars, Odwalla ingeniously offers the option to do so by “Name” (Citrus C Monster, Mojito Mambo), “Essence” (apple, chokeberry, etc.), and “Goodness” (Protein, Manganese, Fiber, etc.)

The design is again used effectively to succinctly describe the process Odwalla uses to make sure its drinks and energy bars are the freshest and safest they can be. (Since the E. Coli outbreak, the company adopted flash pasteurization to prevent such problems.) In the Freshology section (hey, that’s trademarked already, fella), small bubbles of text lead the end user through the process, from where and how the fruit is grown to exactly how the speedy tree-to-shelf process works to keep the ingredients their freshest.

Overall, Odwalla’s site has a fresh and fun sensibility, though its Where to Buy database needs some work. There is a place down the block from me that sells the stuff but the nearest place the site told me I could pick up some is a grocery store 254 miles from here. Making a drive like that for a bottle of cold Odwalla is not exactly what you call environmentally conscious.