how to recycle tetrapaks

As you might know, quite a few local authorities in the UK don't recycle tetrapaks, which is a bit of a pain. There are a few ways of doing it (read more here) but we received a useful tip from a man called Chris today:

"I learnt from a Spanish friend that it is possible to easily prepare a tetrapak drinks carton for recycling by opening the carton and tearing the plastic inner layer away from the card/paper outer layer before putting the card outer in the recycling bin. Although it is a bit of an inconvenience, I just tried it with an carton of mango and passion fruit (my favourite), and found it a pretty simple way to solve the problem, at least until the UK gets its act together on recycling. Give it a go, you might find it is an idea worth sharing."

Thanks Chris.

quality meat products

Here's a photo of some pork pies. We took it the other day for a thing we made. Mmm pies.

our new arrivals

Our big new cartons for kids arrived today. We've been working on them for quite a while. Very happy to finally see them in the flesh, full of crushed up fruit.

They're my favourite bit of innocent packaging so far. Lots of colour, especially on the side panels, which are full of stuff for small people to do.

And there's a little window on the side as well, so you can see how many portions of fruit you've drunk. We've waited for ages to be able to do the window thing. And now it's done. Double happiness.

What do you think of them?

keith's yellow handbag

Those of you who have been following the story of the famous yellow handbag will be happy to hear that it finally sold for £40.03. A nice man called Keith bought it - he says it's for his girlfriend but we think it quite suits him. Maybe he should keep it.

Anyway, Keith's reward for this purchase is that we're inviting him and his "beautiful girlfriend" (Keith's words, not ours - we're not getting fresh or anything) to Fruitstock, as well as sending them some drinks and books and stuff. Sometimes it's worth making that impulse purchase.

have you seen this cat?

Spice has gone missing. He was last seen on Sinclair Road (round the back of Olympia, London W14) and is a large black and white male cat with long hair and a distinctive black spot on nose.

Our Matt is hoping you can find him, as he's looking after Spice while his owners spend the summer in the USA, and he kind of wasn't supposed to lose the cat.

hello/bonjour/hola/guten tag/dzien dobry

We checked round the office the other day to find out what languages people can speak. This is all part of the effort of getting ready for the opening of a new office in Copenhagen and perhaps further afield in the not so distant future. This is what the survey said:

• 7 different mother tongues spoken at innocent
• 85% of the company has English as a mother tongue
• the most languages spoken by one person is 8
• 18 different languages are spoken fluently
• there are 28 different languages spoken in total, including the language of love, which only two people claim to be able to speak

It should be noted that when the company started, there were only two languages spoken in the office - English and Polish. You only ever heard the latter when Adam was on the phone to his grandma.

a cow in the garden

I'm working at home today, trying to write some label copy for some very interesting new drinks that will be in the shops soon. I was up bright and early, looking out across the trees, computer at the ready, only to find that my concentration was broken by a cow. It had barged through the hedge and was chewing on the bushes. So we rang the farmer and herded the cow down the lane, back towards her brothers and sisters. It was all very exciting.

the power of acidic fruit

We're getting ready for Fruitstock. We've made a little film showing some or our preparations. Hope you enjoy it.

battle of the bands

Rubber Jack

Last night was the final of our Fruitstock Talent Search. Every year we choose an unsigned band to come and play at our free festival - we've spent the last couple of months listening to all sorts of stuff, trying to whittle it down to four bands.

The Savage Jazz

After a rock'n'roll evening full of beer, crazy axe licks and some strange percussion (those things that are a bit like cowbells but make more of a woodpeckery sound), we came to decision time. Our four judges (Sarah from Observer Music Monthly, Dominic from The Times Knowledge, a nice man called Sumit [Nitin Sawhney's manager] and our very own Adam Rostom) chose a band called The Savage Jazz.

Scouting For Girls

But the people's choice was Scouting For Girls, mainly because all of the girls at innocent fancied the singer. So we did what any good, decisive business should do and fudged it - both bands will be playing at Fruitstock on the weekend of 5th-6th August.

the famous yellow handbag

Bidding for the famous yellow handbag has rocketed to £34 after we mentioned it in our weekly email today. At midday it was still bumping along at £2.70, but the email has done the trick.