23rd Oct 2019
Brewing giant Carlsberg recently unveiled two prototypes for a “paper beer bottle”, as part of the firm’s Together Towards Zero environmental initiative. Carlsberg has been working on this project since 2015, in collaboration with Danish innovation company ecoXpac, packaging company BillerudKorsnäs, and the Danish Technological Institute. This collaboration has now led to the formation of […]
29th Aug 2018
Packaging delivers to consumers powerful visual messages by which products are made immediately recognisable. As we walk down a supermarket aisle, browse through the pages of a magazine or check out a website we are bombarded with visual cue after visual cue. Our brains respond to these by making instant associations between familiar combinations of […]
22nd Apr 2024
Earth Day 2024 takes place today (22 April 2024), providing an opportunity for us all to come together and renew our commitments to safeguarding our planet and fighting for a brighter future. This year’s theme – Planet vs Plastics – sets particularly clear objectives. For example, a 60% reduction in the production of all plastics […]
17th Jan 2024
Between scoffing mince pies and watching Die Hard (again), I found time over the festive period to watch David Attenborough’s latest documentary series, Planet Earth III. While the shots were predictably spectacular and the animals suitably fascinating, this time around the series focused much more on the destruction of the natural world due to human activity. […]
4th Oct 2023
If you have visited a coffee outlet, or treated yourself to a takeaway this week, you may have noticed something. Your drink should not have come in a polystyrene cup, and your meal should not have come with plastic cutlery. This is because, on 1st October 2023 the sale of a range of single use […]
26th Jul 2023
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Reddie & Grose’s Sustainable Innovation report: an investigation into the start ups, companies, and technology transfer offices making significant contributions to inventions with the potential to address the climate and ecological crises. The launch of our report has been tailored to coincide with London Climate Action Week (LCAW) 2023. […]
15th Nov 2022
I recycle, and I like to think I know what I am doing. Paper and card goes in the little black boxes. Garden waste goes in the green bin. Food waste goes in the little green caddie. Glass, tins, and plastic all go in the black bin. Mrs Kelvey and I even take our flexible […]
23rd Aug 2022
Some inventions are bad: sprayable cheese, subprime mortgages, the mankini. Some inventions are evil: agent orange, the guillotine, spam emails. Some inventions are in fact so evil that they cannot be patented in the UK on the grounds that they are contrary to ‘ordre public’: cluster munitions, land mines, chemical weapons. Then there are the […]
1st Aug 2022
To support the 2022 London Climate Action week in June/July, Reddie & Grose hosted an online panel discussion asking whether, in view of the ongoing climate and ecological emergencies, the Intellectual Property system is doing enough to support innovators working on Green Tech and Net Zero related inventions. Four speakers joined us to share their […]
28th Jul 2022
In 2021, the UK Government made separate food waste collection mandatory for households in England by 2023. This legislation, imposed as part of the Environment Act 2021, is designed to accelerate the transition to a circular economy and tackle significant challenges of waste generation. In England, 50% of local councils are currently collecting food waste […]
7th Mar 2022
To celebrate International Women’s Day I wanted to tell the curious, lesser-known story of one-time inventor and patentee, Carmela Vitale. Chances are you have never heard of her, but I am almost certain you have benefited from her ground-breaking invention. A Slice of History Carmela was born in 1937. By the early 1980’s she was […]
31st Jan 2022
Mrs Kelvey and I recently visited our local refill store for the first time. We’ve known about it for a while but had never had the time to make the trip, but last Saturday we filled our bags with empty bottles and jars to see what it was all about. A study by Deloitte (here) […]
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21st Jul 2021
Reddie & Grose LLP recently participated in London Climate Action Week, delivering a presentation entitled “Innovations for a Sustainable Lifestyle”. Rather than focussing on large-scale global or societal technological fixes, we very much wanted to highlight the changes that individuals could make in their own lives to be better ancestors to future generations. The presentation […]
9th Mar 2021
On International Women’s Day, Georgina Ainscow, Olivia Buckingham and Xiaoxi Zhu attended Innovate UK and KTN’s Women Innovate event. The event was a fantastic celebration of women in innovation, but also carried a message of much more to be done to achieve true diversity and inclusivity. A clear message too, that this can only benefit the economy, with estimates ranging from £180 billion […]
13th Nov 2020
Plastic is great. It’s cheap, strong, lightweight, durable, waterproof, doesn’t break down easily… the list goes on. Its diverse range of properties lends itself to many applications. However, the exceptional durability of plastic is something of a double edged sword. In order to meet the high demand for plastic we produce over 300 million tonnes […]
10th Jun 2020
We have previously looked at a variety of innovations which could replace plastic packaging and prevent plastic from ending up in the ocean. There is no doubt that innovation is key to solving the plastic problem; however, innovators are faced with an additional challenge when researching and developing an idea. This is because it must […]
31st May 2019
The UK’s Environment Secretary Michael Gove has recently confirmed a ban on plastic straws, plastic drink stirrers, and plastic stemmed cotton buds which will come into force in England next year. But, what are the alternatives to plastic? There’s no denying that plastic plays an important role in the modern world. Since the invention of […]
23rd Apr 2018
Scientists genetically modify enzyme capable of breaking down plastic This week, scientists announced that one of the world’s most vexing problems is a step closer to being solved. For better or worse, man-made plastics have become ubiquitous thanks to their durable and lightweight nature and relative cheapness to produce. However disposing of plastic in an […]
16th Mar 2018
Patents exist for inventions that solve real world problems, and the world is currently facing one of its biggest ever problems; plastic, and the ever increasing demand for its use in packaging our everyday items. In many ways, plastic is a wonderful thing. It’s an amazingly cheap, strong, lightweight, and versatile material, which significantly contributes […]