Belu is a drinks business and social enterprise. We put the environment first, always, and invest in people and planet. Since 2011 we have given 100% of net profit to our Impact partner, WaterAid – to help transform lives worldwide with clean water.
We work with the UK hotel, restaurant and catering sectors, providing British mineral water and filtered still and sparkling water with the lowest carbon footprint possible.
Read more about our environment first approach and our partnership with WaterAid.
…that there was a better way to do business. That through business, we could do more than make money, we could help solve some of the world’s problems too. Through water, our mission is to show that delivering an environmentally improved and sustainable offer is possible throughout business.
We are a purposefully compact team with a completely flexible working culture. We work where it makes sense to do so and we work smartly by using tools and collaborations to minimise our footprint and maximise our positive impact. By staying small we keep our overheads low and can support likeminded founders and entrepreneurs by paying them for best-in-class services like HR, coaching and finance. People are the lifeblood of Belu. Our team, suppliers, partners and customers are the crucial collectives of people working with us to change the way the world sees water.
We were incorporated by Reed Paget in 2002 and in 2007 Belu was officially launched as an environmental social enterprise. Karen Lynch led the business from 2010, securing a national network of customers within the hospitality industry. Natalie Campbell MBE took over the helm in 2020, three weeks before the pandemic hit and then in September 2020 with board approval, Nat invited Charlotte Harrington (then COO) to join her as Co-CEO, to scale filtration and take Belu to new territories, beginning with Belu Hong Kong.
When Encirc, our bottling partner created the world’s most sustainable glass bottles in a ground breaking biofuel trial and we jumped at the chance of being involved. As a result, our mixes and tonics were industry leading from day one.
We worked hand-in-hand with our water source partner MSW, to create a 100% recycled plastic bottle, way before it was mainstream. When we realised that the carbon impact of cans and cartons was too great for us to justify a switch, MSW became a leading light, tackling plastic waste with us and turning +90m bottles into new Belu bottles.
Every Belu sale makes a positive difference. We do not shy away from the fact that we sell products and generate revenue because this positively impacts communities far and wide. If something we do had a detrimental impact on a person, community or collective, we would not continue with it. We set a culture that means we all show up with our ethics and principles in action. We make sure everyone we work with and sell to knows who we are and what we stand for. Most importantly, for the next ten years we are inviting people to join the pursuit of our purpose: to change the way the world sees water
We’re proud to be a Social Enterprise. It’s why we carry the ‘Buy Social’ logo on all our products and support Social Enterprise UK, the membership body which raises awareness of social enterprises. As a social enterprise, we demonstrate that we invest our profits back into society.
Belu, The Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) and its members are like-minded souls. We’ve partnered since 2016 to help SRA members understand their water options more clearly and to work positively towards using less and better. We’ve collaborated to help members navigate the complicated world of single-use plastics too. In June 2018 we jointly launched the ‘Unwrapping Plastics Guide’ for the UK Hospitality sector and have helped develop a Sustainable Water Toolkit to help the industry on the road to a more sustainable water service.
We work in the most transparent and sustainable way possible, holding ourselves and our partners accountable for ensuring our ethics are not compromised. We’re not afraid to be different from other organisations and many times have found success comes from countering instead of following. Every year we publish the headlines, key data and stories of our environmental footprint, new initiatives, employment and social impact in our annual impact report. You can read the latest one here.
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