Mar 23, 20232 min read

SAPLING AWAY DAY

Last Monday Team Chestnut headed over to Oxfordshire for Sapling's annual Tree Planting Party. Over 2000 trees were planted throughout the day, alongside cocktail masterclasses, a talk from Earth Shot prize winner Notpla and plenty of tipple tasting! It was so inspiring to be surrounded by these forward-thinking actors in our industry.

Among the saplings were 3 different tree species, native to the Oxfordshire floodplain we were planting in. The trees should help reduce the risk of flooding in the surrounding farmland.

COCKTAIL MASTERCLASS

Dan from London Essence led a cocktail-making masterclass centred around making the staple drink ingredients go further and reducing waste behind the bar. A particular challenge that eco-conscious bartenders face is how to reduce the amount of lemon and lime slices they get through. For many drinks, ice and a 'slice' is simply a garnish so it easily gets discarded without much thought. Dan suggested using rhubarb in place of lime in cocktails as its carbon footprint is half that of limes for us in the UK. It's little tips like this that can be shared among like-minded industry peers to help reduce the waste in pubs and bars all over.

NOTPLA

It was an honour to hear Tristan Kaye - Commercial Director of Notpla - talk about the wonderful work they are doing to make sustainable substitutes to plastic packaging. Notpla are revolutionising single-use packaging using seaweed and plant extracts. It is impossible to listen to their work and not feel totally inspired by the genius innovation behind it. There really is something special in what they have conceived.

Seaweed has huge environmental benefits; approximately half of the oxygen we breathe comes from seaweed, and we aren't really harnessing its true potential.

We got to try out signature Sapling cocktails in the form of the OOHO – Notpla’s seaweed-based, sustainable pods. This technology is truly revolutionary and could replace the need for single-use plastic in a variety of packaging scenarios e.g. sauce sachets and detergent pods.