Happy Monday!

This week we’re all about wine. We cover:

A clear message in a (paper) bottle: Meet Wine Traders for Alternative Formats (WTAF).
The Copper Crew: Can they crack the wine industry?
In case you missed it: Employer-Supported Volunteering: A step by step guide to secure it, and our day at City Harvest London.

Before we dig in, we’d love to ask you a quick question: Which part of this newsletter do you find most useful? Please click on your answer:
Good News Last Week Roundup
Brand Spotlight
Quick Take Topic
‘In Case You Missed It’ Feature
‘Follow Up With’ Resources
Thank you for participating - please only click an answer once. If you have answered in previous weeks, thank you, and please don’t answer again.

> Good News Last Week

🎯 Toast Ale announced their collaboration with Co-op, brewing surplus bread from Co-ops bakeries to create a Hazy Pale Ale which will then be stocked exclusively on Co-op shelves.

🎯 Naked Sprout announced their crowdfunding round was overfunded by 250%, securing £625,000 and welcoming 796 new owners.

⭐️ Mycelium-based meat analog maker Meati Foods closed a $150 million Series C funding round, to help expand its production and accessibility.

⭐️ M&S announced they’re removing best before dates from more than 300 fruit and vegetable items to tackle food waste. Dates will be replaced by a code that M&S staff can use to check freshness and quality.

⭐️ Coffee producer Tchibo announced the launch of their 70% bio based coffee capsules for their Qbo brand. In partnership with Berry and Neste, an LCA has shown that the conversion of the Qbo capsule material results in around 35% fewer CO2 emissions.

⭐️ IKEA Foundation announced they’re pledging $25m in grants to Clean Cooling Collaborative, an initiative aimed at reducing emissions and energy usage from cooling technologies like fridges and air conditioning.

⭐️ PepsiCo announced it is issuing a new $1.25bn green bond, with proceeds set to fund programmes scaling regenerative agriculture, reducing emissions and packaging waste and improving water stewardship.

⭐️ TerraCycle launched Zero Waste Boxes for food manufacturers, which are intended to be used as disposal points for “hard to recycle” waste items like hair nets, earplugs, disposable gloves and safety equipment. Quorn Foods has already saved an estimated 1,500 pairs of disposable gloves and 500 pieces of single-use plastic from landfill by participating in the scheme’s trial at its laboratories.

⚡️ HURR announced they’re the first fashion rental platform to certify B Corp.

> Click on each link to read more.

> Quick Take

A clear message in a (paper) bottle: Meet Wine Traders for Alternative Formats (WTAF).

The carbon footprint of single-use glass wine bottles in the UK alone is ~470 million tonnes of CO2e so far this year. Overall, glass bottles account for nearly half the industry’s environmental impact. Welcome Wine Traders for Alternative Formats (WTAF): an alliance of ‘like-minded’ wine brands aiming to change the game.

WTF is WTAF?

WTAF is a collection of small brands who’ve taken on a mammoth task. Founding members BIB Wine, Canned Wine Co, The Copper Crew, Graft Wine Company, More Wine and When in Rome, working with suppliers such as Frugalpac, are coming together with the goal of changing minds. Reported to be highly conservative, the wine industry views the wine bottle itself as being essential. The empty bottle alone can be worth hundreds. Though the UK is increasingly aware of alternative packaging, the long-held assumption that good wine belongs in a bottle persists. To tackle this, WTAF have been clever in their approach - they launched via wine tastings, to simply prove the quality of their product to the consumer.

Could your brand do the same?

WTAF are a great example of what can happen when truly ‘mission-driven’ businesses can come together, and prove that their power lies in being more than a sum of their parts. It’s not just about creating profitable companies - it’s about creating awareness and encouraging an entire industry to change. ‘Too small’ individually to have their voices heard above the noise of larger industry players, WTAF have harnessed the power of collaboration. It’s this that’s allowed this brand new collective, together with Frugalpac (and the national treasure that is Philip Schofield), to celebrate their cause at the House of Commons after just one year of existence. Since their launch, more brands have joined in: Le Grappin, Kiss of Wine, Cantina Goccia, Sustainable Wine Solutions, The English Vine, Vinca Wine and Weino BIB.

Other FMCG brands should take note: being in the same industry does not necessarily mean you’re in direct competition, especially when the goal is to challenge and change the industry from within. That’s exactly what the members of WTAF are doing, and it’s already attracting big-name retailers such as Ocado who announced in April that they’re stocking When in Rome. We can’t wait to see what WTAF do next.

*When in Rome’s Frugalpac paper bottle. Source: smileymovement.org.*

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> Brand Spotlight

The Copper Crew: Can they crack the wine industry?

A Wine Traders for Alternative Formats founding member, The Copper Crew are helping to change the way consumers enjoy their nice glass of summer rosé. The Copper Crew’s canned wines, on the face of it, aren’t a big deal. After all, we’ve been enjoying quality beer in cans for decades. Yet, as is clear from this week’s Quick Take, this kind of innovation is quietly revolutionary. The Copper Crew are more than a WTAF member, however. Much like a fine wine, they’ve got complex flavours all of their own - and some real legs... (sorry, we had to). Let’s dig in…

Find the gap, mind the gap:

The Copper Crew was founded in 2019 by two friends (Oli Purnell and Theo Gough) who saw a gap and jumped straight in. Their mission? To create a single-serving, fast-chilling, convenient drink - with a comparatively tiny carbon footprint and endless recyclability. According to them, 2/3s of bottled wine's carbon footprint comes from the bottle. They’re also tackling waste too: Laithwaites found that the average British household throws away two glasses of wine a week, after opening more than they felt like drinking. Canned wine combats this. We could keep going - but the environmental benefits of canned wine have been summed up pretty well by The Copper Crew themselves in this article.

You’re right, canned wines already existed, however, premium quality canned wines are far more rare. Why? Industry stigma is one reason. The quality of the wine is assured by its founding members, two of whom have dedicated their lives to studying wine (Sam even receiving plaudits from wine industry heavyweight Jancis Robinson). All The Copper Crew wines are sourced from South Africa, and they’ve aimed to be transparent about their choices in the process - discussing their ‘trials of getting their wine on the high seas’.

Support The Copper Crew via their shop:

Shop The Copper Crew

*The Copper Crew’s wine cans. Source: coppercrew.co.uk*

> In case you missed it

Employer-Supported Volunteering: A step by step guide to secure it, and our day at City Harvest London.

Following the Footprints

🌱 Wine Traders for Alternative Formats…