March 2008

One water

March 2008

ON-TRADE STARTS TO CHANGE LIVES IN AFRICA BY STOCKING ONE WATER

UPFRONT, One to Watch, March 2008, COMMENTS

For those working around the clock in the late night trade sector, thoughts of helping disadvantaged people in Africa are often overshadowed by other concerns. Although government reports of global warming place increasing pressure on operators and businesses to reduce their carbon footprints and be more green, the prospect is daunting and often pre-empted as putting a burden on profits.

But what if there was a way of incorporating help for disadvantaged countries within your daily operation? One Water, launched in 2005 by Duncan Goose, provides a solution that has stormed the off-trade and is permeating the on-trade. The idea is simple: switch from your normal water brands to One’s ethical bottled water where 100% of profits go towards providing safe, clean water in Africa. The money funds unique PlayPump roundabouts, which are installed over boreholes in African schools and work by rotational movement, so when children play on it their energy pumps water up into a storage tank.

One has already been crowned the official water for student unions throughout the UK, a number of clubs, Live8 and Make Poverty History, and has secured a number of national distributors in the off-trade including Waitrose, Tesco, Morrisons and Co-op. Duncan hopes that, with the co-operation of both small and large operators, One will soon grow in the on-trade. The growing popularity of the brand is testament to a change in consumer buying, mirrored by the success of Fairtrade products and organic goods.

One Water was thrust into the public eye when Duncan Goose was named as a ‘Greatest Briton 2007’ in the ‘Campaigner’ category, broadcast on ITV alongside other category winners that included the Queen, David Beckham, Ricky Gervais and Dame Helen Mirren. He was formerly a business development director and board director of a WPP plc subsidiary, but it was selling his house, quitting his job and embarking on a two-year motorbike trip round the world which sowed the seed for his drive to do something different.

Duncan continued the story: “I didn’t come back a hippy, but I saw the trip as a great experience. You see things differently when they’re up close and personal. I was caught in Hurricane Mitch in ’98 which was the second biggest hurricane ever. I saw people who lost everything and it really changed my perspective. When I returned to work I was making lots of money for the company but I wanted to make money for something else.” In 2004 he abandoned his job to form the not-for-profit organisation, after his friend Simon Devonshire came up with the idea in the pub. “We called it One,” he explained, “because one billion people don’t have water, but if you can change one person’s life, then one family’s life, then the life of a community then you’ll make a difference.”

Duncan owes his big break to Ian Mackie of Total Garages. After months of rejections and dwindling funds, Ian agreed to commission One throughout his garages. Duncan hopes that operators will action upon the same wave of inspiration. When NIGHT asked him how operators could benefit from switching to One, he replied: “It costs the same as other market leaders and you can choose how much of the profit goes to One, with a minimum of 5p per bottle. Every time a client’s donations funds a PlayPump, we invite them out to Africa to see it installed and put their branding on the sign above it. Some clients have come back completely speechless from their experience.”

One billion people in the world don’t have access to clean water. And yet on UK soil, and in our licensed venues, where we have free access to tap water, we unnecessarily spend £1.5 billion on buying bottled water, using up the earth’s resources. If consumers switched to One Water, the impact of water provision in Africa would be dramatic. Just 1% of Londoners buying one bottle of One water a day would fund a Playpump for a community every day of the year.

From: March 2008 Issue

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