hairy fruititioners

When we're not working making smoothies, looking for elephants, or building vegetable gardens, we also enjoy running around fields in Pilton (care of Michael Eavis) dancing along to Shakira*, playing with Germanic ladyboys underneath tube-carriage wrecks**, and wearing amusing things on our heads***

Ruth won the competition with her sly blonde tash

 

Though Charlie and Olly's double-team meant that he was mistaken for ZZ Top (who weren't actually on the bill, which led to further confusion)

Caroline and Joe went for a cowby-come-bandito look whilst rocking it out to Muse (what else would you wear to thrashing electro-guitar?)

Tom was mistaken for a disguised Michael Bolton

Joe channelled the hippy love and got lost between Paul Mcartney and the Beach Boys

And then Lady Gaga made a surprise appearance (or so Oli would like to believe)

Of course, it wasn't all just hairplay and braiding, and we tried to ensure that everyone made it to their five-a-day. Don't you think that Florence's guitarist is enjoying himself a pineapple, bananas and coconuts smoothie here?

*cannot confirm that all of us enjoy this said past time

** same again

***totally confirmed

grassy elephants - auction

Ah, elephants. Cute yet big. Massive ears but not renowned for their hearing. Never one to forget your birthday or that one time at 3am when you insisted that you were the 6th member of girls aloud.

I saw this one on sunday:

 

This little fella is part of the elephant parade, 258 of them maurading/chilling out around London. All of them are hanging out in Royal Hospital Chelsea until they get auctioned off for charity on 3rd July

I think (s)he'd look good in our office. (S)he may have already been in our office albeit camouflaged.

Does anyone wish to start the bidding?

don't lose your bottle...

...instead, make sure it ends up in a recycling bin. We know you're good like that anyway, which is why we're going to share with you a small insight into what happens on the journey of your bottle becoming, er, another bottle after you recycle it.

The people at Recycle week made this little video to show that journey. We hope you have been even slightly inspired to find more ways to recycle more of your stuff during this week. We all certainly have:

• Dave M promises to make sure he always puts his teabags in the compost caddy
• Mark G promises to take his old heated straighteners down to his local recycling centre
• Rach promises to stop putting the margarine tubs in the plastic bottle recycling bin

So while it's over and out from the Recycle week team, don't stop the magic. Keep on recycling.

when life douses you in peppermint tea...

...it's good to have an astroturf covered washing line handy

trees get a year off

It turns out that since we introduced our 100% recycled plastic bottle back in 2007 we have saved over 2,500 tonnes of Carbon (CO2 equivalent). For many of us that figure doesn't mean much, but take our word for it, we are better off without all that kicking about in the atmosphere. 

To put it into perspective, that is the equivalent of everyone who works at fruit towers' personal carbon footprints for a full year added together. 12,000 trees would need one whole year to remove that amount of carbon from the atmosphere. See? It's loads.

 

So when you look at it that way, we've sort of given a big forest a year off from cleaning up the air. The trees can kick back, watch all the world cup games (even the afternoon ones) and generally focus on growing leaves and photosynthesis and other tree stuff.

a shed, some veg and lots of busy bees

It's not all spreadsheets and calculators in the merry land of innocent finance.

Last week, the whole Finance team spent a day at Kew Riverside Primary School helping the children to build an allotment on the school field so that they can grow their own veg and maybe some bee friendly flowers. Next thing you know they'll be putting the veg in pots (that rings a bell).

 
But it wasn't all gardening. We also did a spot of shed building too with Rob and Lynne (crowned master shed builders). 

We thought the shed would be handy for storing all the gardening tools but the children thought it was more useful for a sneaky game of 'How many people can you fit in a shed at one time without it falling over?'. If anyone is interested the record so far is 10.

And with the help of lots of little hands (sorry about the paint on their school uniforms) we transformed a plain old boring white wall...

... into a beautiful mural that the children designed.

That's Roberta in the red T shirt. She's in the Finance team and not a pupil in case anyone was unsure.

We figure friendly finance folk couldn't have done any of this without the amazing help of Gareth Miller from the Open Living Company and Paul Munckenbeck from M&S Power Hire. They both donated their time, expertise and lots of materials to our little project at no cost.

They kept us on track on the day and rallied their suppliers to help as well.

Big thanks also go to John at Brewers for the paint, everyone at Alsfords for the timber and Nick from Motive8 for putting us in touch with Gareth.

Here's Gareth and Paul looking tired but happy after a hard day's work. They aren't used to grafting.

 

Paul even let Lou B (aka The Stig) have a go on his digger.

Thanks to Debbie and everyone at Kew Riverside Primary School.  Maybe you could all drop in to see us at Fruit Towers one day? 

 

We'll send a grassy van round to pick you up.

auntie can help

Seeing as it's Recycle Week, the people at Recycle Now have enlisted the extra special help of their Recycling Agony Aunt to help with any electrical dumping issues you might be having.

If things have gone off the boil with your old kettle or it's over (finally) with your Sega megadrive, then Aunty can offer you a word to the wise. Just click here to ask her advice.

When it comes to recycling the packaging form our products, we're doing OK overall. If you're not sure on how to recycle each product, then take a look here.

In terms of our veg pots which currently aren't widely recyclable, you can look here for a small update, fresh from the clever folk at WRAP. Or maybe fill it with jelly for your very own jelly Mould 'n' Hold (TM pending).

Recycle Week

Hello. This week is Recycle Week. Recycle Week is an awareness campaign designed to boost national recycling rates in the UK, brought to you by the lovely people at WRAP and we've brought back our recycle dude to show our support. You may have spotted him on bottles of our mangoes & passion fruits, strawberries & bananas and our apples, kiwis & limes smoothies this month.

 

We work quite closely with WRAP on a number of initiatives to reduce our packaging and waste impacts, so we jumped at the chance to support them during Recycle Week. We also wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that our bottles are made out of 100% post consumer recycled plastic, so we need you to keep recycling so that we can make more of them.

We will be posting Recyle Week blog posts throughout the week, but if you want a bit more info in the meantime check out this page.

ed's cows

You might remember last year that Jim won the innocent scholarship (where you can apply for £1000 to do anything you want provided it's not illegal, cosmetic or dodgy) to recreate Michael Jackson's Thriller in the car park.

Well, the latest person to win the scholarship is Ed G.

He's not off to climb a mountain or bust some moves in tight red denim (mainly because he does the latter anyway).

Instead, he used his scholarship to help restart the suckler herd on his dad's farm.

Ed's family have been farming for five generations ever since his great great granddad, George, took on the farm.

Ed's parents still live on the farm and Ed's dad, Alan, still sleeps in the same room he was born in.
 

However, eight years ago, Ed's family had to sell the herd.

But now Ed and his dad are restarting it.

Last week, Ed went and bought a fine Hereford cow to add to the other eight cows they're bought for the new herd.

Here's the invoice to prove he didn't blow it all down the geegees

And here's the photographic proof to back up the invoice.

However, the Scholarship Cow and her friends have yet to be named.

So if you have a moment of bovine brilliance when it comes to cow's names and fancy winning yourself a crate of thickies, just post your name below and the best ones will get to christen a cow and win some yoghurty goodness.

As a headband wearing turtle once said, 'Cowabunga'.

(or in non hero-in-a-half-shell terms, good luck)

word up

Ever wondered how many times you have to say a word before it becomes official?

At what point does it move from the unstable stage (playground parlance) to the diffused stage (everyone in Cool Town saying it) through to stable (getting in the dictionary) before hitting passe (your dad)?

Well, we want to find out. Just tell us your new word and what it means by posting it as a comment below.

We'll pick our favourite and try to use it as much as possible on our labels, website and right here on this blog.

The creator of the new word will not only win themselves a case of our finest drinks but maybe even bagsy a spot in the dictionary. If we use it enough.

Rules are it can't be rude, it can't be offensive and it can't be rubbish.

We'll pick the winner at the end of the summer, so plenty of time to get creating.

Good luck.