The Juice Round's Journey.

The Juice Round came out of 15 years' of creating bespoke drinks for high profile events and business clients. As our orders increased, so did the amount of single use packaging passing through our production kitchen.

I felt increasingly uncomfortable about the ease with which our drinks were consumed for a fleeting moment of pleasure, only for the bottles to then follow a long recycling process, or to float around in our environment for decades afterwards.

I started researching how bottles are made, the journey they take to get to us, and where they end up after we've used them. The more I learned, the more uneasy I became.

It frustrated me that there weren't alternative options available to drinks producers outside this cycle of production, consumption and disposal. At the same time, I felt that replacing single use plastic with another form of single use material wasn't the answer, as recycling has failed to keep apace with the scale of the problem.

I began sounding out our corporate customers about providing drinks for their workplaces in reusable glass bottles as an alternative to single use containers, just like the milkman. Would they return their glass bottles, so we can refill and reuse them?

Their feedback was positive, and so The Juice Round was born.

Our Plastic Diet.

As I explored the impact of single use plastic on our planet, I was taken aback. At least 8 million tons of plastic spew out into the ocean annually, equivalent to emptying a rubbish truck of plastic into our waterways every minute.

There is a great pacific garbage patch: a floating island of discarded plastic larger than the size of Texas. It's a graphic visualisation of what we're doing to poison our planet.

Over time, marine debris breaks down into tiny prices of plastic that end up in our food chain. We already consume the equivalent of a credit card of plastic each week.

On top of this, almost 50% of what we put into the recycling bin is never recycled. Recycling is a long process that itself consumes resources: bottles are transported to recycling centres, sorted, crushed and melted down to begin a new life.

Most of our plastic waste gets shipped off abroad to countries that don't have the infrastructure to deal with the huge volumes received, often ending up being illegally burned or put into landfill. The toxic emissions cause chronic health conditions for the local population, and further pollute the environment.

The best option for our planet is to use refillable bottles and reusable cups, replacing single use drinks packaging and reducing pressure on recycling.

Covid & Optimism.

Covid has fundamentally changed the world of work. In response to the pandemic and working from home, we shifted our focus to offering The Juice Round's returnable bottle scheme through retail and food service outlets. Our trade partners have embraced the reuse agenda and their responsibility to offer consumers a convenient (and delicious) alternative to single use. It's been great to see so many bottles being returned each week... never has washing up felt so satisfying! My goal is to save 290,000 bottles from entering the waste stream over the next three years. Plus for every 100 bottles collected, we plant one tree (find out more here).

Climate change, like the pandemic, is a global issue. Covid has created enormous challenges and had devastating consequences, but it has also shown that when mobilise as a species, we can achieve extraordinary results in a short space of time. The pandemic has proved that we have the ability to find solutions quickly and effectively.

We can only point the finger of blame at ourselves for the environmental harm we have created, so we must in turn provide the solutions. Nature has the amazing ability to regenerate itself if we allow it to do so. There are reasons to be hopeful if we each play our part and act now.

This is the decisive decade to tackle climate change. We need urgent change in how we deal with single use packaging. I believe change is possible. Let's "Keep The Planet Peachy" by refilling and reusing!

Sylvia Garvin

Founder, The Juice Round