7,000 bottles saved!

And counting - thanks to you 🥂

Well, we finally launched! And you lot have already saved over 7,000 plastic bottles from being made and thrown away.

How good.

A very big thank you to all of you - for ordering, for emailing us about minor website quirks (for sending screenshots of said quirks) and for trying something that is, let’s be honest, not immediately intuitive the first time someone hears ‘drink balls’.

We confused a few people, forgot a few things and there were some minor issues, but overall, I’m surprised (and pleased!) at how well it went.

For a soft launch (on our website only) of a business that spent three years in R&D hell trying to make green chemistry work in the real world… 7,000 in just a week feels pretty significant.

If this is what happens before we’re anywhere near supermarket shelves, before events, retail or any kind of real scale… dare I say it makes me optimistic that we might actually shift the drinks industry together?…

So what’s next?

Our next item on the to do list is finalise our events schedule for the next few months. Hoping to see a fair few of you around the country. I’m thinking ‘crochet and cocktails’ (I can’t crochet but I can make cocktails), or ‘bow wows and balls’? So many ideas, so much alliteration.

More on those soon but if you have any more ideas (they must have some form of alliteration though, it pleases my brain), don’t keep them to yourself.

A newsletter update:

We’ve been thinking about how we’ll handle newsletters without harassing you now that our site is finally live.
This is our final newsletter through Substack - in future they will be sent through our shiny new newsletter system so we don’t double up and drive you all mad. Articles and the other insightful, witty things we write here will be posted on our blog on our website.

If you want to follow along the more personal side of building the business, sprinkled with tips on building better businesses and probably too many pictures of animals, I write on here too.

Otherwise this will be our last Substack article.

Some bits and pieces in the press:

I was on the NBR podcast with Simon Shepherd last week. I have no idea if it was any good or not as I cannot listen to my own voice, but you can listen below if you’re interested.

We talked about why recycling was never going to be a solution (which plastic manufacturers knew way back when), why glass performs worse than people expect when you look at life cycle analyses, and why I didn’t just retire after Ethique - amongst other things.

And yet these are the quotes Ella chose to take from the interview:

Simon) Are you relieved or excited?
Brianne) Terrified.

Simon) Why do this?
Brianne) Glutton for punishment.

Simon) You seem mildly enraged by some things the drinks industry does?
Brianne) Mildly?

Simon) Sorry, did you say a “snafu”?
Brianne) I did, yeah.

You can listen to it here.

You can also see a piece in the ODT here, the fab article in Stuff here, I had a chat to Mike Hosking on the radio here, and some other bits and bobs here and here.

We can’t do much, but we can do this

Last week was a chaotic week around the country and my heart goes out to all affected by these increasingly common 1-in-100 year weather events (I wonder why that’s happening then 🤔).

It’s an incredibly poor consolation prize, but if you know of anyone affected who might appreciate a wee pick me up, let us know below and we’ll see if we can send them some balls.

I am embarrassed to say I have become one of those people who puts a coat or a drying robe on her puppy on rainy days. Okay, I'm not that embarrassed.

Thank you again for your support and encouragement. 7,000 down, next stop 30 million, right?

Have a great week,
Brianne.