No matter which brand you prefer or what you call it, soda (the preferred term in the Northeast, where I’m from) is basically carbonated water with a whole lot of high-fructose corn syrup. Though Pepsi might be changing that, with their new “Pepsi Raw,” now available in the UK, made from ingredients like apple extract, coffee leaf and cane sugar instead of corn syrup.

Definitely a step in the right direction, especially if it’s sold in glass bottles as shown above. Fun/scary fact: the aluminum industry uses more energy than the entire continent of Africa. And though plastic bottles can sometimes be recycled once or twice, they eventually end up floating in the ocean or buried in a landfill. 

For more on the health and environmental impacts of soda, check out Simran Sethi’s latest on the Huffington Post.