This week we’re celebrating a special moment - our first trophy has arrived! Glad has officially been recognised as Best Social Impact Startup at the 2025 Startup Innovation Awards, and the award now has pride of place in the office. It’s a win for the whole community, showing that what we’re building together is making a real impact.

In this episode of Glad Tidings, Ben shares:

• The story behind our very first trophy and why it matters for the Glad community.

• New categories of brands on the way – from car insurance to spa breaks.

• Why we’ve decided not to add some well-known names like BrewDog and dryrobe (and what that says about our Partner Charter process).

• The latest progress on our totaliser - now at 51,180 kg of greenhouse gases removed.

• A new focus on bringing Glad to businesses as an employee benefit.

We’re moving fast and building momentum. Every new member and every new partner brings us closer to a cleaner atmosphere - and that’s something worth celebrating.

Watch Episode #12 now

Links

Watch on Youtube and Spotify and listen on Apple Podcasts.

Transcript:

Hi, welcome to Glad Tidings. My name's Ben Wynn and this is the weekly update on the progress we're making as the Glad community towards cleaning up the atmosphere. Coming up today, we have the obvious and weekly totaliser update so we can see exactly where we stand, the progress we're making. I've got some updates for you on brands, new categories of brands that we're introducing to the platform. And a couple of brands that we've decided not to work with and I want to talk to you about why, which brands and exactly why so you can see a behind the scenes on the process.

But what I want to start with is a bit of show and tell. I want to show you something because this arrived in the post. Now this is a trophy that says on it Startup Innovation Awards Best Social Impact Startup and it has on there the word winner and then Glad Climate. We are winners. That's us as a community. We are being recognised for what we're doing. And that is just a really nice thing. Yes, it will sit on the mantle piece of the Glad office, but it's for all of us. It's for the community and it's recognition that what we're doing is really working. So super, super proud to have that. And I hope you guys are too. So thank you to the UK Business Awards but thank you mainly to you guys, the Glad community.

Okay, so what else are we adding to the platform? Let's talk about some brands. Well, we, as I mentioned last week, if you're following along on these videos, watching or listening, you'll know that we're in a phase of trying to add as many brands to the site as possible. Our belief is the more brands we have, the more savings we have, the more value there is in Glad, and that will drive more members

And the more members we have, the more impact we have. So when we come to talk about our totaliser, we will drive that up the amount of greenhouse gas we've removed from the atmosphere if we get more savings. So what we've got this week coming are car insurance, spa breaks, one of the UK's favourite sustainable food brands. We've got savings on dog food, luxury bedding and a brilliant and really well-known heritage outdoor footwear brand. Now I'm deliberately not mentioning the brand names because all of those are going to vote. You remember, there's a member vote, we ask you, you have the final say, and so as and when we've gone through that process, if they're voted on and there are no red flags, then that's when we can talk about the brand names. But really, really exciting to be adding so many new brands. There's 10 in for vote this week.

And there's a backlog, really now extensive backlog that we're working through, going through that due diligence process and they'll be added to the site in due course. But we're not adding everybody. And as we work through that due diligence, there's a couple of reasons why we've turned down a couple of brands that you may well know. The first of those is BrewDog. Now, in and of itself, a great brand, really well recognized. They're big brand and they've got a good reputation out there as...producing really good product. I love their beer. But as a fit for Glad, it just doesn't feel quite right. They've gone through a period of having a number of bumps around culture and reporting and transparency. They've had their BCorp status removed and we just don't think that they are a great fit for you guys, for the Glad community right now. So we've decided to pause and not put them into the platform. And that came about during what we call the Partner Charter, the due diligence process of evaluating which brands to work with or not.

Another one that came through and it actually sailed through the Partner Charter due diligence is dryrobe. Now dryrobe is a brand I absolutely love. I went on holiday to Cornwall this year, saw more dryrobes than you can shake a stick at really down there. Love the brand, love the product, as I say, sailed through the Partner Charter.

But when it came to the value that they could provide to you, the Glad community, it didn't quite match what we were after. What we look for are values aligned brands that provide real savings to you, the Glad community. And unfortunately, dry robe are just not in a position to be able to offer a saving that makes it meaningful for you. And so we decided again to pause and we'll revisit dry robe because we still really love the brand.

We'll revisit them in due course and see if it's something that we could add them at a later date. So that's what we've not added, but what we have been adding is members and what we have been increasing is the total. What matters is our impact. That's the amount of greenhouse gas we've removed from the atmosphere. And so far we're at 51,180 kilograms. It's a great bit of progress. We're moving in the right direction. We all want it. We all need it to be higher, quicker, and therefore...we have an ask. Now this ask comes a slightly different one to what I've asked you in the past. What we're thinking about now is how we take Glad to market. And one of the dominant ways in which we're looking to do that is through a B2B2C approach. As a business, we want to approach other businesses to get end consumers. And in our case, that's as an employee benefit. We approach a business and they provide Glad as a saving to their employees as a perk, as a benefit. Now those businesses are quite probably paying for those employee benefits already. They pay a certain amount per month and you get access to a whole load of perks. There are lots of platforms that do this already, none of which have the associated climate impact that comes with Glad. And so we think what we can do, what we're looking to test is to go to businesses and capture their employee benefit, perks spend, but re-divert it to the planet through the climate saver card. Therefore, the ask is really simple. It's who do you know? Who do you know that runs an organization, runs a small business, or who works within the HR department, or perhaps they're the head of people. We want to speak with them, we're looking to validate this as fast as possible, and ideally sign up as many corporate members as we can.

And remember, the more members we have, the more corporate members we have, the quicker we increase that total and the greater the value is within this community. So help us. Go out there, think about who you know and pass the word of glad onto them or let us know directly and we'll reach out to them. But that's it for now.

Thank you guys. Really glad, a) you watched to the end of the video, so thank you for that. I'm glad you're following along. And if you are, remember, I'm really glad about that too.

All right, thanks your lot. Until next time.

Cheers.