So, this week you can win some hip new clothes, learn how to save the planet and check out a bikebox. You are one lucky son of a gun.

Getting bigger

First up, the kids. They've got it tough. They have to stand on chairs to reach stuff on tall shelves. School every day. Rubbish pocket money. So we thought we'd do something good for them. And seeing as we couldn't send them all stilts or subsidise their income, we've made some big versions of our kids' cartons. The same veryniceindeed recipes, especially designed for the younger palate, in a big one litre carton. Available in all sorts of shops as of now.

Win cool stuff

We haven't had a competition for a while but we think you'll agree that this one's a good one. Our friends at howies would like to give away £250 worth of their fine clothes to a boy and the same amount to a girl. All you have to do is follow this link to their website and answer the question. Easy peasy.

Things are going well in Denmark. You may recall that we opened an office there a couple of weeks ago and we're happy to report that we've sold some drinks. Always a good thing in this game. Anyway, we're pretty sure that our early success is down to our chosen mode of transport. The bikebox, as we like to call it, is practical, comfortable and recommended by Copenhagen's top cardiologists. Here's a picture of our Niina modelling the bikebox.

We won a special Dutch prize the other day, called the Gezond Nu SpijsPrijs (which means Spice Price). Here's what the judges said:

"The jury unanimously chose innocent. There has not been any discussion.
Your product is IT. In taste, health benefits and ideals; the very best."

It's one of the first non-UK prizes we've won for our drinks, so we're very proud. If your Dutch is up to it, check out the full jury report here. The best news though, is the fact that top Dutch celeb chef Rudolph (a member of the jury) has turned our smoothies into a special dessert. The recipe is right here - Granita on Autumn Fruit. Enjoy.

In other news...

• A man called Andrew obsesses over Rich, Jon and Adam's shirts in The Sunday Times.
• Save the planet whilst on the toilet.
• There's now a flickr group for our little woolly hats. Post your knitting pictures to it pronto.

Autumn is inescapably approaching. There's plenty of it to love - crunchy leaves, drinking tea with purpose and getting your jumpers out from under the bed. Make sure you get out for some bracing walks, even if it means you miss a couple of these email updates. Off you go.

Peace One Day

Thursday 21st September is the UN International Day of Peace. Peace One Day are the people behind this day, and as they say "the vision of the Day extends far beyond the cessation of violent conflict and represents an opportunity for individuals to join in a moment of global unity." So please, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, be peaceful on 21st September (this Thursday). No arguments, no fighting, no road rage, no raised voices and definitely no war mongering. Get involved at Peace One Day.

Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society - doing it since 1801

Gooseberries are green and a bit hairy and they're very nice in a smoothie, which is why we've made this blackcurrants and gooseberries recipe for Autumn.

But the best thing about gooseberries are gooseberry clubs. In the 18th century, instead of going down the disco, people had clubs so that they could compare gooseberries. The big ones usually won, but sometimes the tastiest ones got a rosette. The best known club is still going strong in Yorkshire. Hello to members of the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society if you're reading, from all at Fruit Towers. Have a lovely autumn. (Details of how to join the Society can be found here).

Hot news from the world of Premiership football. Watford FC are now stocking our drinks so that the first team squad can get their goodness from our little bottles.

Expect to see their results pick up immediately (they've got Wigan on Saturday - three points in the bag, without a doubt Brian).

We hear that some of you have been struggling to find bobbles for your Supergran hats. Well, here's a simple solution - email us and we'll send you some. Mail the following to hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk and we'll dispatch the bobbles:

Your name
Your postal address
Your phone number and email address (in case we need to check anything)
Number of bobbles required

Our stockist of the week is the largest rock climbing gym in Asia, even though they aren’t properly stocking yet. As the people from Camp5 say "We discovered innocent drinks and love the philosophy and story behind the drinks. We have been product testing the yoghurt drinks among our patrons and the response has been fantastic. For now, our supply has been from a pool of people who travel to London but our demand has exceeded our capacity to supply.” Sadly, we can’t get a regular supply out to Camp5 (they're in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) right now but we’re working on it. It just might take a little while...

In other news...

• The discovery of a giant planet that's lighter than a ball of cork.
• Watch the Earth creak.
• Some fine stuff about apples.

It's a big week for us. We've launched in Scandinavia. Tell your Danish and Swedish friends to buy our drinks. Please.

The land of the midnight sun

As it says above, our drinks are now available in Denmark and southern Sweden. Exciting times. Our innocent people in Copenhagen are all working their Danish/Swedish backsides off so that everything is perfect for the launch. Meanwhile, here at HQ, we had a Scandinavia Day. This involved us learning a bit more about our Nordic neighbours, eating meatballs and wearing Viking helmets. So absolutely no stereotyping there then.

Here are some facts about Scandinavia that we learned. You may find them useful the next time you are trying to chat up an attractive person from that region:

• Scandinavia is made up of four countries - Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.


• There are 199,000 lakes in Finland


• Abba's only US number one was Dancing Queen


• And most importantly, Ikea sold 112,606,368 meatballs last year

Recycle with purpose

We doff our Viking horns to James and Will Glover. They sent us a letter and some examples of what they've been doing with our cartons, which is pretty smart. They've made these stylish wallets, complete with press-studs to keep your cash safe. As James and Will put it themselves, "whoever opens this package first can be the proud owner of our cool and ethical wallets and can show off to everybody at Fruit Towers saying "Naa naa na naa naa, finders keepers losers weepers". Couldn't have put it better myself.

After that overly long headline, there isn't much left to say. We've got 1000 knitting kits sitting here waiting for you, so you can knit some hats for Supergran. And they're absolutely free. To get one, click here and fill in your details.

At her majesty's pleasure

It isn't every day that we get to park our van on the ambassador's tennis court. But that's what happened last week in Paris. We won a prize (Best British Innovation 2006) and were invited to the British Embassy by HM Ambassador Sir John Holmes GCVO KBE CMG and his wife Penny to celebrate ASAP. John, as we like to call him, enjoyed the fact that the only place for us to park the grassy van was on the embassy tennis courts. The security people weren't as impressed. Guess you can't please everyone.

Ambassador fact: Mrs Ambassador (Penny) likes our drinks. She's written a book about sandwiches which features one of our drinks on the cover.

Here's our Stu in this month's Packaging News. According to the article, he is "determined to shake up traditional thinking about what can be achieved with packaging". And this is true. It was Stu that led the project to make our bottles from 50% recycled plastic (a UK first) and who is currently testing a new biodegradable corn starch bottle. Whaddaguy.

And finally...

• The tallest tree in the world has been found. How come it was so difficult to find?
• Our blog was 'Blog of the Day' on the Typepad site last week. High praise indeed. You can read the blog here.

This week - rosehips, woolly hats and homemade itching powder. What do you mean you've got something better to do?

Knit's that time again

Yes, time for another few weeks' worth of ill-judged knitting puns. Seems like it's come round a bit quick but there you go. Anyway, it's time to dust off your needles, unravel your wool and get knitting. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of Supergran, it's a bit like this: we knit lots of little woolly hats, stick them on the bottles and then sell them in the shops. For every behatted bottle sold, 50p goes towards helping keep older people warm this winter, via the good people at Age Concern.

This year we're aiming to knit 175,000 hats (last year we did nearly 96,000) and whilst we're OK at knitting, it would be great if you fancied helping out. The knitting pattern and all other details are here and this year the Supergran bottles are going to be available in Sainsbury's.

The polyphenol spree

Here's something that we posted on our blog last week, but we thought we'd share it again, seeing as it's pretty interesting.

Recent research has shown that drinking juice frequently may significantly cut the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. The bits that are thought to be responsible for this good news are polyphenols, which are a type of antioxidant. If you¹re after any more of these polythingies, have the following for your tea: peanuts, green or white tea, red wine, olive oil, dark chocolate and lots of fruit and veg - all of which are rich in said nutrient. Best of health. More here.

Fruit of the week - rosehips

And finally...