Since launching in 2012, Waiākea Hawaiian Volcanic Beverages has built its reputation around naturally alkaline volcanic water and a focus on sustainability. CEO and co-founder Ryan Emmons discusses how the Hawaii-based company expanded from a local start-up into a B Corp-certified brand promoting circular packaging and community impact.

Ryan Emmons

Can you tell us about the origins of Waiākea – what sparked the idea, and how it grew into a full-fledged brand?

I grew up splitting my time between Hawaii, where my mother was raised and my extended family lived, and California. Experiencing life in both places gave me a deep appreciation for the environment and the lifestyles they each embrace.

Before enrolling in USC’s Marshall School of Business and, more specifically, the Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, I was involved in a number of clean water, environmental and education non-profits, and I saw firsthand the impact those programs could make, and simultaneously, their flaws and limitations. That experience sparked a bigger vision, to build a triple bottom line brand and company that combined my focus on community impact and sustainability with my interest in entrepreneurship.

In 2012, I co-founded Waiākea Hawaiian Volcanic Beverages with my cousin, Hawaiian artist and game designer Alex Preston, and my good friend Matt Meyer. In the early days, we scraped together start-up costs from family and friends and made local deliveries with a U-Haul. From those beginnings, Waiākea has grown into a national brand, built on circular packaging, sustainable sourcing and a strong commitment to community.

Where does the name ‘Waiākea’ come from, and what does it mean to you?

The brand name Waiākea draws inspiration from the historical divisions of land, or ahupua‘a, in Hawaii, and specifically the area of Hilo on the Big Island, where we’re headquartered.

The meaning of Waiākea itself roughly translates to 'broad waters' and alludes to the resilience and importance of our aquifer system. It’s part of our charter as a public benefit corporation to serve as stewards of the aquifer, so we’ve set extraction limits to a fraction of a fraction of one percent of its daily sustainable yield and recharge rate.

If we didn’t have a sustainable and abundant source (it rains 360 days a year in Hilo), we wouldn’t be doing this. California’s water management could take a lesson from Hawaii’s playbook.

Your water is sourced from the Mauna Loa volcano. What makes this source unique, and how does it shape the taste and quality of the product?

Our water filters through nearly 14,000 feet of porous volcanic rock, absorbing trace minerals that make it naturally alkaline. Unlike most brands that use baking soda or electrolysis, its alkalinity comes from natural minerals like magnesium and calcium. It's really the naturally occurring silica, which is unique to a volcanic process, that gives it its smooth mouthfeel.

Waiākea has just been certified as a B Corp. What does that recognition mean for the company?

Earning B Corp certification with a score of 126.6 places Waiākea among the top 5% of B Corps globally and marks the highest score for a water brand. It demonstrates that 100% recycled packaging, sustainable sourcing and measurable community impact can scale alongside business growth.

Your bottles are made from OceanPlast – 100% post-consumer recycled plastic. Why was it important to move away from virgin plastic, and what challenges did you face developing this packaging?

We researched a lot of packaging alternatives that are ‘marketed’ as green, but many of them had hidden environmental costs or required infrastructure that didn’t exist at scale, such as Tetra Pak and other multi-layer packaging that can’t be easily recycled.

After years of research and development, we were one of the first to commercialise and completely commit our supply chain to 100% rPET bottles when we started in 2012. Our goal was to draw a line in the sand and be a catalyst towards the increased adoption of recycled content, and almost a decade later, this also led to the launch of our OceanPlast line, which focused specifically on coastal diversion and collection.

The cost implication was significant, but in our mind, the benefits are worthwhile – 100% post-consumer recycled PET dramatically lowers emissions, water and energy use compared to virgin plastic and other materials, while completely reducing the need to produce more fossil fuels. It is abundantly clear that it is the best available packaging solution according to all peer-reviewed LCAs. It also has the lowest total environmental and economic switching cost here in Hawaii, and can be recycled almost infinitely with the most negligible material loss across packaging types.

If the entire industry were to switch to 100% rPET and we improved bottle redemption programmes that have been so successful in improving collection rates, while at the same time lobbying for a federal bottle bill, the positive environmental impacts would be gargantuan. The importance of a closed-loop ecosystem across all materials cannot be understated.

We acknowledge there is no perfect solution when it comes to packaging in the beverage and great consumer packaged goods industry, but the goal should be to do the best we can with the information we have and reduce our impact as much as possible. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

Beyond water, you also offer sparkling water and coffee. How do these fit into the Waiākea identity?

All of our products, including sparkling water and coffee, align with brand pillars – Live Healthy, Live Sustainably and Live Ethically. Sparkling is offered in sustainable, refillable high-grade extrusion bottles that we recommend be reused with our bulk boxes or at home.

Our coffee is sourced from Hawaii family farms and roasted using our smokeless roast process to reduce emissions. We decided to also launch the ready-to-drink latte items to disrupt the decadent coffee space, which is loaded with sugar, by offering a 70% lower sugar content while still giving that indulgent experience, but with a simple ingredient panel without all the fillers.

Looking to the future, what are Waiākea’s priorities for growth – whether in new products, markets, or impact initiatives?

Waiākea’s priorities for growth are to help contribute to a better future for people and the planet, but what I’m most excited about at the moment is the convergence of packaging innovation and climate-smart distribution.

We have a few big announcements over the next 12 months, one big one having to do with carbon-negative inks and algae. With that said, the future is much more than just a better bottle, it’s a smarter ecosystem that connects sourcing, packaging and logistics into a transparent and optimised system.