Belu's Origin Story - The good the bad and the exciting. - Belu
Source: https://belu.org/belu-origin-story
Archived: 2026-04-23 17:11
Belu's Origin Story - The good the bad and the exciting. - Belu
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Belu’s Origin Story – The good the bad and the exciting.
January 29, 2025
Belu Water was inspired by the UN Global Compact’s mission to encourage businesses to do more to address world problems. Here’s how the story unfolded, as told by Belu Founder Reed Paget (pictured above):
While attending the launch of the Global Compact, journalist Reed Paget was encouraged to stop reporting on global problems and instead to set up an “environmental” business to help fix them. He chose bottled water as it was a poetic product for addressing international water problems and it was an iconic tool for addressing the ecological impact of the consumer goods industry.
The biggest early decision was whether to make Belu a ‘for-profit’ business, which offered easier access to seed funding, or a ‘non-profit’ creating a purer mission but limiting access to capital. He chose the non-profit option, hoping to get grant support. His first funding was a loan from a social-enterprise foundation which enabled the designing of the product, a first manufacturing run and a first retail listing in Waitrose in 2004. So far so good.
With proof of concept, Reed began approaching a wide range of environmental foundations for growth capital.
Unfortunately, while they supported the mission, they couldn’t support even a non-profit business. As Belu couldn’t accept equity investment, the only remaining option was further debt funding. Reed faced a dilemma. Shut down the company and forgo the mission or take on the difficult challenge of setting up a ‘debt-funded’ enterprise. He decided that the value of pioneering sustainable manufacturing processes and funding clean water projects was worth the difficulty of using debt.
While this debt-funding propelled Belu forwards, as interest accrued and loan repayments came due, the company was continually being dragged backwards. Equally problematic, finding loan-capital was a time-consuming task. However, by 2008, Reed had cobbled together loans from over 19 funders in over 35 rounds. Each round involved much correspondence, financial documents, loan agreements and meetings (it was highly time consuming). All the while, as an under-funded start up, the company was usually less than a month from insolvency, so managing cashflow became a daily crisis management challenge.
Despite this challenge, Belu delivered on many important commercial and environmental fronts.
We developed revolutionary compostable plastic bottles and got them national retail listing. We pioneered carbon neutrality in the drinks sector. We rooted out toxins in the drinks industry supply chain. And we grew the company from sales of $8,000 in 2004 to over £2 million in 2008 and hit profits. So in terms of creating the world’s most sustainable drinks brand, generating national awareness, hitting profits, we were doing fairly well.
Where things took a bad turn was the banking collapse at the tail end of 2008. This took a heavy toll across the entire drinks market and pushed Belu back into losses. Moreover, spending so much time on fundraising and cash management left the team overstretched and exhausted. To reduce this pressure, in 2009, Belu’s funders agreed to write-off all the debt. And to improve the management challenge, Reed recruited a new MD with a commercial background to reduce costs, streamline operations, regain profitability and increase donations to clean water projects. The company has since grown from strength to strength.
There are many lessons learnt from Belu’s origins.
Most important is that Belu demonstrated that a small start-up could create a far greener product than the biggest of drinks companies and that this advantage could win in the market. This is an exciting message for any entrepreneur wishing to help create a sustainable economy.
As for Belu’s founder, Reed has continued creating other green products and businesses and occasionally even reports on the biggest issues facing the world. You can follow his work at
One Earth
.
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Thank you, Nat
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Sign up to our newsletter
We’ll keep you up to date with news about our drinks, impact and how you can get involved in changing the way the world sees water.
Skip to content
Belu’s Origin Story – The good the bad and the exciting.
January 29, 2025
Belu Water was inspired by the UN Global Compact’s mission to encourage businesses to do more to address world problems. Here’s how the story unfolded, as told by Belu Founder Reed Paget (pictured above):
While attending the launch of the Global Compact, journalist Reed Paget was encouraged to stop reporting on global problems and instead to set up an “environmental” business to help fix them. He chose bottled water as it was a poetic product for addressing international water problems and it was an iconic tool for addressing the ecological impact of the consumer goods industry.
The biggest early decision was whether to make Belu a ‘for-profit’ business, which offered easier access to seed funding, or a ‘non-profit’ creating a purer mission but limiting access to capital. He chose the non-profit option, hoping to get grant support. His first funding was a loan from a social-enterprise foundation which enabled the designing of the product, a first manufacturing run and a first retail listing in Waitrose in 2004. So far so good.
With proof of concept, Reed began approaching a wide range of environmental foundations for growth capital.
Unfortunately, while they supported the mission, they couldn’t support even a non-profit business. As Belu couldn’t accept equity investment, the only remaining option was further debt funding. Reed faced a dilemma. Shut down the company and forgo the mission or take on the difficult challenge of setting up a ‘debt-funded’ enterprise. He decided that the value of pioneering sustainable manufacturing processes and funding clean water projects was worth the difficulty of using debt.
While this debt-funding propelled Belu forwards, as interest accrued and loan repayments came due, the company was continually being dragged backwards. Equally problematic, finding loan-capital was a time-consuming task. However, by 2008, Reed had cobbled together loans from over 19 funders in over 35 rounds. Each round involved much correspondence, financial documents, loan agreements and meetings (it was highly time consuming). All the while, as an under-funded start up, the company was usually less than a month from insolvency, so managing cashflow became a daily crisis management challenge.
Despite this challenge, Belu delivered on many important commercial and environmental fronts.
We developed revolutionary compostable plastic bottles and got them national retail listing. We pioneered carbon neutrality in the drinks sector. We rooted out toxins in the drinks industry supply chain. And we grew the company from sales of $8,000 in 2004 to over £2 million in 2008 and hit profits. So in terms of creating the world’s most sustainable drinks brand, generating national awareness, hitting profits, we were doing fairly well.
Where things took a bad turn was the banking collapse at the tail end of 2008. This took a heavy toll across the entire drinks market and pushed Belu back into losses. Moreover, spending so much time on fundraising and cash management left the team overstretched and exhausted. To reduce this pressure, in 2009, Belu’s funders agreed to write-off all the debt. And to improve the management challenge, Reed recruited a new MD with a commercial background to reduce costs, streamline operations, regain profitability and increase donations to clean water projects. The company has since grown from strength to strength.
There are many lessons learnt from Belu’s origins.
Most important is that Belu demonstrated that a small start-up could create a far greener product than the biggest of drinks companies and that this advantage could win in the market. This is an exciting message for any entrepreneur wishing to help create a sustainable economy.
As for Belu’s founder, Reed has continued creating other green products and businesses and occasionally even reports on the biggest issues facing the world. You can follow his work at
One Earth
.
You might also enjoy
The Role of Responsible AI
Read More
How hospitality continues to be resilient
Read More
Thank you, Nat
Read More
Sign up to our newsletter
We’ll keep you up to date with news about our drinks, impact and how you can get involved in changing the way the world sees water.