About Cool Change

We, the Paterson’s are a farming family that some years ago decided to diversify into water on our small farm  situated in the High Country of Victoria. Whilst the world around us is coming to terms with Climate Change, our family decided that we wanted to be part of the solution rather than the problem. We wanted to offer consumers an alternative bottled drink that considered the impact on the environment we started with a few simple steps such as decreasing energy usage, offsetting carbon emissions and revising our packaging and this became the start of Cool Change.

Who Are We?

We’re the Paterson family. A family is made up of:

Helen (Mum) - The Water Witch

James - The Bottling King

Richard - The Ideas Guy

What We Stand For

Realistically we know that bottled water isn’t the greatest thing for the environment. As it stands PET is a huge contributor to landfill. We at Cool Change wanted to offer an alternative product that considers the environment and the birth and afterlife of the packaging. There are often moments when we have no other option but to consume a drink from a bottled source. We’re hoping that along the way we can create a change and improve the way we produce, consume, dispose and manage our waste. We are passionate about working towards reducing the global waistline rather than contributing to it.

Ultimately we would like to start the ball rolling and eventually encourage the ‘big guys’ and all the bottled drinks in Australia to be using Ingeo™ PLA technology too. This is not just a marketing exercise dreamed up by some goose with a degree in spin doctoring. We are really concerned about climate change and believe that we all need to do what we can to avoid it. We stand for action rather than just words or ideas so we recommend you check out our projects to find out what we’re doing about climate change.

Instead of spending our resources on advertising we’d prefer to focus our efforts on projects that can really make a difference. Some of our projects include:

Carbon Neutral Production

Cool Change Natural Spring Water is Australia’s first bottled water with a Carbon Neutral Production Process. The production process (including the resin production, transportation, bottle blowing and water bottling) is certified carbon neutral by the Carbon Reduction Institute. As part of the auditing process:

1. Measure our energy usage and carbon emissions.
2. Reduce our energy and material usage.
3. Offset the carbon emissions that we do produce. (through purchases of carbon credits)

Cool Change’s production processes are certified carbon neutral by the Carbon Reduction Institute (audit framed in compliance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP)). Cool Change Natural Spring Water’s NoCO2 certification means that our greenhouse gas emissions have been measured, reduced and offset using Greenhouse Friendly™ carbon credits.

Commercial Composting

We are lobbying to establish wider spread infrastructure for commercial composting services in Australia which at this stage are almost nonexistent outside of South Australia.

Considering that approximately 42% of Australia’s waste in landfill is organic matter, we feel that that the organic waste is better manged through commercial composting rather than to slowly decompose in landfill. Commercial composting will;

  • Reduce our contribution to landfill by 42%.
  • Reduce our national’s greenhouse gas emissions by improved management and prevention of methane production (caused by decaying organic matter).
  • The resulting by product of composting, mulch to be put back on land to provide much needed nutrients to be distributed back into the land as natural fertilizer thus reducing the need for synthetic fertilisers.

Biopolymers made in Australia

Long term, we’re working towards increasing our usage of more sustainable packaging solutions such as Ingeo PLA and ultimately producing it from Australian sugar cane.

Practices for a Cooler Change

Some practices we’ve made to improve the way we work as a business include:

  • Reduce our energy and material usage! We try to reduce then offset what we do use.
  • Use renewable energy sources - many energy suppliers offer Greenpower accredited energy.
  • Use teleconferencing facilities instead of flying for conferences or meetings.
  • Use local produce - to reduce emissions created by transport.
  • Offset the emissions of our cars.
  • Replace all your incandescent lights with fluorescent blubs.
  • Use recycled products or Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper sources where possible (printer paper, toilet paper, boxes).
  • Minimise printing of documents - email where possible.
  • If you drink coffee - order to ‘have here’ instead of ‘takeaway’ to save on disposal cups.
  • Share your sustainable business ideas with others.

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