Greenbottle, the company behind the product, already manufactures the world’s first paper milk bottle, which is being tested in Asda stores in the south west of England and is apparently proving popular with ethically minded customers.

More than 15 million plastic bottles are used in the UK. Most end up in landfill where they will last for up to 500 years.

“In local shops where they are available, they are outselling milk in plastic bottles by two or three to one,” said Martin Myerscough, the Suffolk businessman who invented the paper bottle.

Myerscough established his company after talking to a waste tip supervisor who told him plastic bottles were the biggest problem in his job. He says that retaining the wine bottle shape was an attempt to reassure consumers. “We can be more radical, but we are inventing a concept here and we don’t want people to be too scared about it. If we are going to change consumer habits, we need to lead them along gently,” he explained.

The wine bottles feature a similar bag to that found in wine boxes so the drink is kept in pristine condition. Green- bottle’s products are currently made in Turkey but a plant is due to open in Cornwall soon. The intention is to sell the technology to companies, allowing them to build bottling plants next to their manufacturing sites and cut down on transport times. The current machinery is capable of producing 50 milk bottles a minute and is patent protected.

But while consumers have warmed to paper milk bottles, venturing into the wine market is more adventurous.  “How wine looks is incredibly important; it’s such an arcane business,” said Adam Lechmere, news editor at Decanter magazine. “Consumers don’t care so much about whether wine is green or not. It’s not like meat or veg. We don’t interrogate wine like we do a chicken.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk

The partnership, set up in 2006, involves a host of community and voluntary organisations, as well as Cornwall Council, Cornwall Waste Action, the Environment Agency and Visit Cornwall.

Lady Mary, who until earlier this year was the Queen’s representative for Cornwall, is involved with a number of Cornish charities and organisations.

Commenting on her new role with Clean Cornwall, Lady Mary said: “I am very pleased to be leading a partnership which is working hard to eradicate the visible presence and impact of litter from our beautiful county.”

Rick Stein, Patron of Clean Cornwall, added: “I am delighted that Lady Mary has chosen to take up the chair of Clean Cornwall. Her knowledge and passion for Cornwall will be integral to the future success of the initiative. Lady Mary’s appointment and the search for a dedicated Project Officer means that Clean Cornwall should be looking forward to a great 2012″.

David Owens, Cornwall Council’s Assistant Head of Environment and Waste Management, said: “We are delighted that Lady Mary is taking a key role in our partnership which has gone from strength to strength over the last five years.”

Councillor Julian German, Cornwall Council cabinet member for Waste Management, Climate Change and Historic Environment, said: “Clean Cornwall has shown that individuals and groups can make a real
difference to their local environment.

“Individuals such as Roger Catchpole have led inspirational campaigns within their communities and with the support of organisations such as Surfers Against Sewage and businesses such as St Austell Brewery, Clean Cornwall has prevented or tidied away many tonnes of litter.

“With the appointment of Lady Mary as Chairman we are hoping that the profile of Cornwall will continue to rise and that, through all of us working in partnership, Cornwall will have the amazing environment that people expect”

*Members of the public are invited to Clean Cornwall’s litter awareness event at the Eden Project on Friday 17 February between 10am and 1pm. For more information email info@cleancornwall.co.uk

For more information about Clean Cornwall visit www.cleancornwall.co.uk

With the £75 million town centre regeneration investment back in 2009, St Austell town is on the up, slowly but surely… and you’ve heard about our Market House plans right?  We’re set to move into the gorgeous 19th century Old Town Hall & Chambers space end of this year. Apart from this being a brilliant and exciting step for us and our clients at Leap, we’re hoping the building will be used for lots of exciting creative workshops to entice and inspire the local community.

Watch this video to see the wonderful work St Austell folk are doing : ) and by all means pop in to show your support.

http://db.cornwall.gov.uk/events

The notion that everyone has a personal and financial interest in saving the rainforest (and other ecosystems) is a relatively novel one, so it’s not surprising that the world hasn’t poured even more money into Ecuador’s coffers. This experiment has made clear, though, that the decision not to drill for oil does have financial value—over the longer term, that value could outstrip the profits of exploiting resources. Reuters’ Felix Salmon does a good job of laying out President Correa’s incentives for keeping Yasuni in tact, even if he can’t scare up the full $3.6 billion he’s looking for by 2024. As Salmon puts it, “Oilfields, eventually, run out of oil. But untapped oilfields never do.” As long as the world depends on oil, fears climate change, and values biodiversity, Ecuador can essentially charge the world rent on benefits derived from the rainforest. –Sarah Laskow of GOOD.

Read the full story here

We’ve had fun with plants and people, consulting, creating, listening, and acting. We’ve even had our first true internship with Nathan Lance – and rather than do what we think an intern needs, we encouraged Nathan to actually help us design his own time. Through this experience we now feel we can offer a really good and rewarding placement at Leap, showcasing all of our triple bottom line faces within the design industry.

And ourselves, well we’ve retained our ISO14001 accreditation for the 3rd year running. We’ve spent the year concentrating on our people (still a way to go.. but everyday we learn), and we managed to achieve our Investors in People status. We even reduced our Leap operational carbon budget from 6.9 tonnes to 4.7 tonnes – for a team of our size, including transport miles, this is a fantastic achievement AND we got a fantastic surprise recently after being awarded the BITC Prince’s Mayday Network emblem for the last three years of carbon accounting. This resulted in our name being published in a report alongside; BT, Marks and Spencer, John Lewis, EDF, Co-operative Group, Natural England and many more. As we endeavor to move forward sharing our low carbon economy knowledge and leadership we’ll keep you posted. Oh and all our websites and hosting facilities are fully Carbon Neutral…..it took 3 years but it was well worth it.

In the past, during this time of year we’ve bought mango plantations, goats, mini chunks of Amazonian Rainforest, and made reusable Christmas cards, each with its own story or eco-social twist in typical Leap fashion. However, this year we have decided to save some pennies (even though we do really love nice tactile cards), and put the money we would have spent on you, into our big 2012 venture…selfish but it is so going to be worth it.

Interested? Well, after our various successful projects for Designs of the Time (DOTT), the ‘Big Design Challenge’ was born out of our Eco Design Challenge to be a bigger and broader project produced by DOTT with the help of SEA. Leap was asked to both consult on the branding and be a mentor for St Austell’s ‘Market House’ challenge. It went really well and now the Market House has all of its units occupied plus a waiting list! Resulting in a re-inspired local community, a place worth visiting, and the businesses are working collaboratively. It’s by no means over, it’s going to take alot of work, belief and action, but it will be worth sustaining it.

As the Market House is in our local patch, once Leap’s mentorship periods was over, we stayed engaged and have since helped do a touch of subtle paint and bunting decoration. Further consultation is in the pipeline and we’re even designing a series of interpretation panels. But biggest and slightly daunting of all, is we felt the best support we could give, was to move Leap into the old Town Hall & Chambers space (comes complete with jail cells and ‘Harold’ the ghost).

The main room is two stories high (its the big window area shown in the photos), it’s amazing, inspirational and needs a lot of attention. We don’t know how we are going to raise the money to do what needs to be done, but we will try. Funders, crowd sourcing, personal and peer loans, we’ll see what we can do. Eventually what we will have is an open creative studio hub space. A place where people can come and see how design happens, a shared space for anyone who wants to hot desk from an hour to a year. It will also contain a meeting and training space, as we want to engage with schools, colleges and businesses. It will even have a ‘Fablab’ so makers can come in and create things on a bookable basis.

It’s all a bit big, but we may as well aim high as we’ve never done anything like this before. And at the end of the day it’s a suitable home for Leap. It’s got history, it’s inspiring, it needs some love and it’s on the edge yet the heart of it all. And of course we want to share it and the whole caboodle will be under-pinned with all Leaps environmental know-how.

So Good Energy will start the ball rolling with the right energy (hopefully solar in the future). Cornwall Sustainable Building Trust believes and is working with us, as are Eden. With a bit of help from our friends in the National Trust and English Heritage, we’ve also got some pretty cool mentors tucked away; George Ferguson of Tobacco Factory, Jamie Pike of Hamilton House & Canteen, as well as a few others along with the support of the Market House Directors.

We want to restore the space where possible, to bring in environmental actions and awareness, to provide a place of creativity, wellbeing and commerce. We would like to share our ideas and learn from others and I hope you don’t mind this indulgence, we love you all, and we really, really appreciate working with you all. And we hope you might like to come and see our space, watch it grow and join us on our latest Leap trip.

We’re nervous but then that’s part of living. Thank you in advance to all those that have offered various kinds of support, knowledge and skills to date. We will keep you updated with our progress.

Happy everythingness, enjoy time with your family, appreciate your surroundings, and believe.

Matt, Charlie, Chris, Lee, Claire (England and Stanton), Richard and Nathan.

PS (We know emails are equally as bad as non-digital media, but we’ve done our best and all Leap digital projects as with our other forms of design, are Carbon Zero, and our hosting is UK based Carbon Neutral. Every little bit counts and we’ve all got to say hello in some shape or form. Sometimes.

PPS (Oh and we’ve started our own bamboo underwear company Tachepants, check them out ; )

1  The 5 large arched windows is where the Leap Rooms are going to be. Various shots of the Market House and existing businesses there.
2 In September 2011 the day after I got back from Kilimanjaro we held our first ever workshop in our future space. All around inspiring and informing such spaces. A fitting start.
3 Room with a view. This is the two storey high old Town Hall space, this room in the 20′s used to be a dance hall. The floor is sprung maple…. its needs a clean up!
4 In partnership with jewellery designer Sarah Drew, we created MAKE – specifically around making more of a place, it’s talents and making stuff! Our first event had over 500 people attend. OUr next is in March 2012 we are using MAKE partially help us raise the vital funding to restore this beautiful space as well as promoting all of the fine MAKER talent in Cornwall.

Jorge decided to apply for a new loan, since he would like to buy cedar, laurel and olive wood, as well as some glue, and also perform maintenance on his work equipment, giving him better security as he carries out his profession of making furniture.
He has been able to improve his situation and have what he needs in his work, all thanks to the help of the loans. His condition has changed for the better and he is able to satisfy his customers’ requests.

Jorge lives in San Miguel, in the department of the same name, with his wife and three children aged 6, 3, and 2. He is 35 years old and a carpenter. He started his workshop with help from a friend with whom he used to work. He learned the trade well and decided to open his own business working from 8am to 4pm. Jorge has the advantage of many customers as well as years of experience.

He is seeking a loan to buy materials such as different types of wood, nails, paint, and sealer. The money will help him to have sufficient material to complete the orders he already has, as well as provide better work and service. One of Jorge’s goals is to have a well-equipped workshop with quality equipment and a large number of satisfied customers.

Merry Christmas to you and your family Jorge!

www.kiva.org

Aswell as fascinating tales from Sir Walter Hicks family history, the 104 paged, carbon  balanced history book  ‘Born & Brewed’ is jammed packed with updates from the last ten years including the fantastic renovation of the Visitors Centre, the bottle line re-opening, and of course the infamous ‘Smugglers’ beer being re-introduced after many years.

Pictured top the far left Roger Ryman- Head Brewer and Jeremy Mitchell- Marketing Manager.

Centre image  is the wonderful Liz Luck, Author of the history book.

Right- The window display Waterstones, Truro.

If you’ve become concerned that the sudden appearance of facial growth on hundreds of men’s faces of late was a disturbing new fashion trend, fear not. The institution of ‘Movember’ invites men to let their top lip grow free for one month, the aim of which, is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. The global fundraising total this year was £69 million!

With £1.00 of every sale going towards prostate-cancer.org.uk, our Tache-hot under-garments are on sale for mo-tivated men and ladies who like to surprise! Just email info@leap.uk.net with your preferred tache, pant style and size. Also Tachepants are made from super soft luxiourious bamboo. Click here to find out why bamboo is superior to cotton!

The Tachepants site is live:  tachepants.co.uk  or Facebook Tachepants.

Go on, you know you want to…perfect stocking filler….

Matt is porting a ‘Blue Oyster’ here!