The Next Round: What happens after you change your drinking?
The Next Round: What happens after you change your drinking?
Our podcast this week is all about how to drink sustainably and how to make positive choices in what you drink when you go alcohol-free. Who better to guest edit this edition of our Sustainable September podcast than Danielle from Binary Botanical? Binary Botanical uses a waste ingredient – the hop leaf – to make their unique, tangy and herbal wine lover’s beer. Try it for yourselves today with 20% off with code Club20.
Danielle teams up with Jo from Giki Zero, an app that enables us to monitor and amend our carbon footprint and live a more sustainable lifestyle. This includes how we consume products like non-alcoholic drinks ethically, and how we can change our drinking habits as well as our environmental habits so that we drink sustainably.
Later in the podcast, Dru speaks to Danielle from Binary Botanical, Christine from HOLOS Kombucha, and Claire from Allotment Drinks about how their brands are doing their bit for sustainability.
Those of you who follow Club Soda will know that we’ve been big fans of Binary Botanical for was while. The low-calorie table beer isn’t just a healthy alternative for those of us who have chosen to go alcohol-free. This ethically-minded, environmentally conscious brand also helps us to drink sustainably by utilising normally discarded hop leaves in their tangy, alcohol-free hybrid of beer and prosecco. A waste product that also tastes delicious!
There’s definitely a very close alignment between a healthy diet and a sustainable diet. And I think that that’s a good thing, at least it removes any sense of conflict in terms of ‘Gosh, if I do this, it will have this negative knock on effect’. In terms of choosing products that are sustainable, I would say the best thing is to…choose products that don’t have, you know, a multitude of different ingredients in them that have some from all around the world. Packaging is really important, you know, if it’s recyclable, or the better made from recycled goods…it’s a necessary part of the global food industry, but it’s not a necessary part of consuming.
Jo Hand, Giki Zero
Giki Zero is an innovative free app that delves deep into our personal carbon footprint based on a few simple lifestyle questions. Giki, which stands for Get Informed, Know your impact, is a Social Enterprise whose mission is to help people live sustainably. The app gives you an initial estimate of your carbon footprint and then offers personalised information and challenges to help you make responsible decisions.
As Jo from Giki discusses with Danielle in the first part of this sustainability recording, choosing sustainable products might feel like a series of micro-decisions that don’t seem to make a huge difference. In terms of trends and collective decision making, though, choosing sustainable products and monitoring how we live environmentally has a huge environmental impact.
As a product, HOLOS Kombucha offers fantastic premium kombucha drinks made with the finest loose leaf tea that is a perfect alternative to sparkling wine for celebrations. We especially like the ‘Sparkling Oolong’. As a brand, HOLOS is paving the way for brands to create long-lasting and pioneering social change. HOLOS Kombucha curate a small-batch product that provides ample, entry-level, meaningful roles for survivors of modern slavery in locations across the UK.
As founder Christine tells our co-founder, Dru, people really do care about companies with a conscience. Whether it’s waste reduction, using technology to create change, or supporting vulnerable people, we’re more eager than ever to support companies that are doing good in the world. And with around 100,000 slaves in the UK at the moment, modern slavery is a hidden issue that needs support. This small-batch kombucha company really is brewing for good.
Claire is the founder of Allotment Drinks, a low sugar, lightly sparkling soft drink alternative to alcohol. The ethos of this company, whose ingredients are all from the UK’s abundant countryside, is less about technology and more about the grassroots sustainability of alcohol-free drinks…quite literally!
We champion the Grow Your Own by local low food miles messaging, which we’re really passionate about. We campaign to encourage people to grow their own garnishes and support their local greengrocers, as well as support growing British produce and avoiding unnecessary importing.
Claire Oxley, Allotment Drinks
For Allotment Drinks, Mother Nature is their mixologist. She’s been a good source of fantastic ingredients used by the company, and so they strive to treat her as well as she’s treating us by minimising their carbon footprint and food miles.
Our takeaway from this fascinating discussion with experts in the sustainable drinks industry is that choosing to drink sustainably as an alcohol-free movement helps to influence trends collectively. The more that people shift their drinking habits and the more that we create wider availability for ethical products, the better it is for our health and the health of our planet.
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