UK: RAW Bottles has become the exclusive reusable bottle supplier to the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF).
The partnership is part of AIF’s Drastic On Plastic campaign, launched on Earth Day 2018, to reduce pointless plastic and waste at AIF events. It saw 60 independent festivals pledge to eliminate single-use plastics on their sites by 2021.
RAW Bottles is the sister company to RAW Foundation, the charity that partnered with AIF on the Drastic On Plastic campaign. RAW is ‘on a mission to free the world from pointless plastic’ and its founder Melinda Watson is currently on a four-month overland tour of South America researching how plastic makes its way to the natural environment.
The Drastic On Plastic initiative will receive 10% commission on all RAW Bottle sales made directly to AIF member festivals.
Many festivals have already chosen the RAW Bottle for their events, including Shambala, Port Elliot, Boomtown, Cropedy, Arcadia, Green Gathering, Greenbelt and Fire In The Mountain.
Each reusable RAW Bottle sold typically helps to prevent approximately 167 single-use bottles from ending up in landfill every year. Switching to reusable bottles, like the RAW Bottle, is a simple solution and a key change that festivals can promote to audiences.
480 billion plastic bottles were sold globally in 2016 – that’s a million bottles per minute or 20,000 per second, according to Euromonitor.
Paul Reed, CEO of AIF, said: “We are delighted to launch this partnership with RAW Bottles. We recognise that water bottles are one of the biggest problems for festivals when it comes to single-use plastic, so it’s crucial that we recommend relevant suppliers of effective alternatives to our members. We’ve done the research and feel confident that RAW offers the highest quality reusable bottle and the most sustainable option. This partnership will also support RAW’s work around plastics on a global level and ongoing activity around the Drastic on Plastic initiative.”
RAW Bottles has also developed a new purchasing model for festivals that does not require funds for orders up-front, as events may not know how many sales to expect. The buy-on-demand option allows festivals to sell now and pay later, purchasing only the amount they need, to be delivered to their events for collection by buyers.
Joe Buirski of Fire in the Mountain festival, said: “As a small festival it’s hard to commit capital to buy a significant amount of reusable bottles in advance. Buying RAW Bottles on-demand is perfect for us as we can put the bottles on sale along with tickets, gauge interest ahead of the festival, and order the amount of bottles actually sold to either send out or pick up at the event.”
