welcome to the thirsty planet blog

You may have noticed that Thirsty Planet has been a bit on the quiet side recently?

We’ve been keeping a bit of a low profile, keeping our heads down and still working hard at raising money for Pump Aid, but during this time we’ve also been undergoing a rebranding exercise of Thirsty Planet.

Four years and £1.4 million later we felt Thirsty Planet deserved a make-over!

We’ve a lot to shout about. We are proud of our achievements and have so many success stories from communities who will continue to benefit from our support.

We’re committed to growing Thirsty Planet and continuing to donate significantly to Pump Aid. We conducted research with our customers and listened to how they felt we could improve our range so we could benefit the charity the most. This has included re-branding packaging, a new website and working on campaigns to raise awareness working closely with Pump Aid. We hope you like the changes!

This is just the beginning.

There’s lots more planned to help you find out more about what’s taking place with the field teams in Africa and ways to get you and your friends engaged with Thirsty Planet and Pump Aid’s work.

Spread the word. We can make a bigger difference working together.

It’s hard when you’re producing a charity supporting product such as Thirsty Planet and really committed to making a real difference to be faced with those who just want to buy ethical to ‘wear the badge’ and to be ‘seen to be doing the right thing’.

There are many excellent charity-supporting brands on the market, giving customers their biggest choice ever. Some are clear about what they do to help make a measured difference, whilst others are not.

It must be a difficult decision for consumers and it’s no wonder especially in this economic climate that many consumers have become ‘charity cynics’.

The Zenith Report 2011 reporting on the UK Bottled Water market, raised the importance ‘that the correct message is delivered to the customer’ with respect to ethical waters, ensuring total transparency to allow consumers to make an informed choice.

It would be great if the message could be standardised to allow comparison across brands, to differentiate between those ‘ethical’ brands that are happy to appeal to the ethical market, have some charitable associations but don’t actually achieve very much, to those brands that donate significant amounts and are making a real impact.

Consumers deserve to know the facts, we all want to help and do something good, but we need to have confidence in the funding mechanism and level of donation.

The most frustrating situation however is when people do have enough understanding to make an informed choice and actually do consider the facts, but still don’t care enough.

They are happy to be seen to be buying an ‘ethical product’ but don’t really care about ‘why.’

Be sure that Thirsty Planet is committed to a guaranteed donation, paid direct to Pump Aid with every bottle and pack sold and that your donation gets to the heart of the issue and to the people who need our help most.

We’re really excited that our new kids’ multipack is now on the shelves.

We’ve listened to what you were saying and we’ve made the pack larger with more child-appeal!

With 8 easy-to-drink-from sports cap bottles in each pack, they are perfect for packed lunches and ‘on the go hydration’. Each pack will provide a guaranteed donation to charity partner Pump Aid of over 40,000 litres of clean water!

We know children are very receptive to learning about the world around them, and they’re also keen to make a difference, we hope that by introducing them to Thirsty Planet at a young age, it will educate them about the problems in Africa and spur them on to help!

The bottles have a fun, friendly design with easy to understand ‘Did you know?’ facts.

They also feature our little blue elephant character, which plays a very important role in helping to carry the messaging and explain just what Thirsty Planet is all about. Our elephant acts as a ‘mascot’ and helps encourage children to engage with the brand’s ethical message. Our elephant reminds us ‘don’t forget to help’ as we all know elephant’s have very, very good memories!”

We sure our new pack will appeal to all Thirsty Planet supporters who want to provide their children with a convenient and healthy alternative to sugary soft drinks.

And how good does it feel when your children want to have Thirsty Planet in their lunch box because they know it does great things?