pick of the packaging

Vice Admiral T. R. Cardboard-Box, Sir Reginald Bubblewrap, Lady Margaret Cell'Ophane - oh yes, the great and good of the packaging world were all out in force last week for the annual UK Packaging Awards.

The glitzy ceremony was held in the Grosvenor Hotel in London and we picked up the rather heavy, slightly sharp edged yet nonetheless coveted award for 'Brand Client of the Year'.

Beating off strong competition from Apple, Proctor & Gamble and Coca-Cola, we won in recognition of our 100% recycled bottle, our quest for sustainability, our all round packaging design and for being the brand most people would like to work with.

Which is always a nice reason to win.

John Inverdale presented our Jaqueline and Simon with the award, confessing in hushed tones he had 'literally millions' of our drinks at home.

No favouritism there then.

here’s a question for you...

Do you think the following item is:

a) A tool for working out where we get our fruit from
b) A really fancy cheese plate
c) The Barclays Green Leaders in Business Award trophy

Yep, it’s C (we know the silver plate at the bottom gave it away).

This week has been a great week - not only did the sun shine for about 15 minutes on Wednesday, but we also won a Barclays Green Leaders In Business Award. The awards were designed for British businesses to demonstrate how they are addressing the global environmental challenges we all face through the use of new processes, technology, products and services.

We really liked the philosophy behind these awards as it was about proving that sustainability and being a successful, competitive business can go hand in hand. Becoming a sustainable business is something that we passionately believe in and all of us are committed to delivering our sustainability goals.

We know that there isn't always a perfect solution but there is definitely always a better one and we’re not afraid to work hard to achieve our goals. As the old saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed – keep trying until you do. It's been a really busy year on sustainability for us so far. We've been working on:

Getting our pineapples from Rainforest Alliance certified farms - The first pineapple farms in Latin America were certified at the end of 2007, and we took the first delivery of certified pineapple earlier this year.

Rolling out our own set of minimum standards for sustainability with our suppliers which cover all relevant social and environmental issues.

Introducing a brand new label for our bottles made from 25% recycled paper and 75% paper from forests that have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Reducing the amount of paper used in our kids’ wedges and 1L carton by 10%.

Introducing key performance indicators for all our production, packaging and logistics suppliers to drive forward continuous improvements in the areas of energy, water and waste.

Whilst we’re immensely proud of the work we’ve achieved so far, we know we have a long way to go, and the journey never really ends.

Sustainability is always a process of constant improvement to ensure that we are running the business in the best way possible and that we make the most responsible choices as we grow. Every day we are looking for new ways to become a more sustainable business and encouraging our suppliers to do the same. Our plans going forward are to make the step change from ‘greening’ our current business model to what we are calling ‘advanced sustainability’ (until we think of a catchier term). Basically, we want to challenge everything about our business to make sure we’re doing everything that bit better.

In terms of this award, we were up against some pretty tough competition so we are extremely chuffed that we won. A big thanks to the judging panel for picking us as a winner, to our suppliers for working towards our sustainability goals with us, and to everyone who works at innocent for doing their little bit.

Right, where's the cheese?

football was the winner

Ladies and gentlemen, please meet the Goldfork Toads, innocent's very own all-conquering five-a-side team.

They won the cup (pictured in Ed's hands, above) and the story goes like this:

"Last night innocent’s own Goldfork Toads footy team won the league. A freak set of results, involving fete helpers Sister Sledge actually winning a game, conspired to hand the mighty Toads the cup after they themselves smashed their opposition 8-2.

The dramatic finale was a fitting close to a season where the Toads had scored a total of 75 goals and finished with the highest goal difference in all of Chiswick. There were highs and lows, lefts and rights but despite Ops Matkinson’s fabled touch in front of goal, Oli utilising his kick boxing skills, Andrew W top scoring while the keeper, Giles C getting sent off in nearly every game, Jim (aka Tony Yeboah) going on holiday for most of the season and Ed G returning 1 goal in 10 games the toads fell out on top.

The trophy was presented by Greg, the guy who collects the money at the end of the match. The winning keeper Andrew W said ‘I can’t remember the last time a saw a trophy that big, pet’. Greg followed with ‘never before have a side been so happy to win the Chiswick 5-a-side league division 3 title. It’s concerning’. "

Now that, I'm sure you'll all agree, is what sport is all about.

can you pass the salt please

We don't know a huge amount about the brandjunkie awards but they have just voted us the number 10 brand to sit next to at dinner and said that we are more inspiring than Barack Obama. We're quite revolutionary and green as well apparently.

It's a big global survey though so we're pretty pleased, perhaps they liked the thought of our cute British accents?

cool

The Fonz, Fonzie, Fonzerelli. Now he was cool. So cool in fact that he'd go water skiing in a leather jacket (no handed). We could only ever aspire to be that cool when we were young.

We got a step closer recently though after being named one of the top 500 'Cool Brands' in the UK. Here's our page in the Cool Brands 2007/2008 book.

The awards are judged on innovation, style and desirability. Qualities we try to live by everyday funnily enough.

al gore, prince charles and our special prize

scruffy Anthony and gorgeous Emma get the prize (fourth and fifth from left)

Prince Charles, Vice President Al Gore, influential speakers on global issues, flattering us and telling us we were helping to make a difference. Whatever next?

The reason all of these dignitaries are standing with us is because we won a National Example of Excellence from Business in the Community for our Supergran campaign. As well as the prize, Al Gore said Emma's dress was very nice. We're trying very hard not to let it all go to our heads. My mother punctured my balloon by labelling me a scruff for not wearing a tie.

Thanks again to everyone who knitted hats and to Sainsbury's and EAT who sold them for us. More about our plans for this year coming soon...

where should we plant this tree?

 

We got to go the Mayor of London's office recently, to receive our 'Big Tick' award for our Supergran campaign. The awards are described as "awards for the positive impact responsible business operations and activities have in the marketplace, the workplace, the environment or in the community." And naturally we're chuffed to bits to win one.

But the question is this - where should we plant the oak sapling that we got as a prize? We think west London could do with a new tree, but we want to put it somewhere where it's going to be happy and grow up big and strong.

Does anyone have any ideas?

winning stuff on the telly

This isn't we-won-a-prize week, but we did win another prize. And seeing as this one was on the telly, it seems churlish not to give you a blow by blow account, almost as if you'd watched it on the box:

The show begins. It's on prime time ITV, just like Coronation Street and Heartbeat. Proper telly.

Here's Gordon. He'll be presenting the prize for 'Business Achievement'.

"Could it be us?" Adam wonders. Jon and Richard say nothing and smile, whilst the women behind them fall asleep.

"Blimey," says Adam, "we've won." Jon is excited and quickly looks down to check that his shoes are on the right feet.

"Thank you Gordon" says Jon. "And good luck with the new job."

"I knew we shouldn't have let him collect the prize," think Jon and Richard.

Rubbish captions aside, we were very surprised and extrememly chuffed to win. As Adam said in his acceptance speech, "I'd just like to thank my hairdresser" we couldn't have done it without the people who drink our drinks. Without you, we'd be a useless business. So thank you, again. We've got a lot to be grateful for.

we won a green prize

We just won a special new prize. Now, as you know, not only do we like to buy the best tasting fruit, but we also try to buy it from farms which look after both the environment and their workers. To help us do that, we work with the Rainforest Alliance, an international non-profit organisation that protects ecosystems and the people and wildlife that live within them.

Last week it was the Rainforest Alliance's 20th birthday, and at the celebrations we were lucky enough to receive their Green Globe Award for businesses that "demonstrate an extraordinary commitment to furthering sustainability by integrating environmental and social sustainability into their work."

They only gave out three such prizes worldwide, so we were honoured to win. We promise to carry on being good and doing good, even if Rich and Adam did look like scruffy b*ggers when picking up the prize.

(l-r Patrick Swayze, Gareth Gates, James Bond)

We'd also like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Carlos Vega, the new Fruit Supply Coordinator with the Rainforest Alliance (we helped provide the funding for his role). Carlos will be helping us buy more Rainforest Alliance certified fruit, including pineapple, orange, acai and acerola.

He's Costa Rican, loves laptops with big screens, and enjoys a double can of beer before he goes to bed.  He knows the fruit industry inside out and is going to be invaluable to us in our quest for more certified fruit.

euro prize

Marijntje (in the middle) collects the trophy

We won a prize. We think it's the first prize we've one for being a good European (as opposed to British) company, so we are naturally getting excited and doing a whoopee dance.

Specifically, the prize was the European Business Award for Growth Strategy. After winning the regional and national heats at the end of last year, we were up against some big guns like EDF Energy and O2 this time around. We did very well to win.

Niels and Marijntje from our Dutch office went to pick up the award. Here's a picture of Niels trying to break it during the train ride home.