Reed Paget
Most sustainability commitments fail at the point of product design, capital allocation, and supply chain economics. Boards announce net zero targets, then discover that the operating choices to deliver them are harder, slower, and more expensive than the narrative implies. The gap between the ESG headline and the manufacturing line is where credibility is won or lost.
Reed Paget is an environmental entrepreneur and founder of Belu Water who helps organisations turn sustainability commitments into product, supply chain, and commercial decisions that survive scrutiny.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Reed Paget
- He has built a sustainability brand from a blank sheet, including the UK’s first compostable corn bottle and a working carbon neutral supply chain, so he can speak to climate ambition with operating evidence rather than slide-deck targets.
- He hard-wired a charitable mission into a commercial business by directing 100% of Belu’s net profits to WaterAid, a model that informs how purpose can be structured into a P&L without becoming marketing decoration.
- His Schwab Foundation award and UK Cabinet Office ambassadorship give him a policy-level fluency that sits behind the entrepreneur story, useful for boards balancing regulator pressure with commercial reality.
- Through One Earth Innovation and Ecocap, he has worked across compostable plastics, recyclable packaging, and low-energy products, so he can talk innovation portfolio rather than single-product anecdote.
Biography highlights
- Founder of Belu Water in 2002, positioned as the UK’s most eco-friendly bottled water brand and the world’s first carbon neutral bottled water.
- Launched the UK’s first compostable plastic bottle made from corn in 2006.
- UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008, awarded by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
- Social Enterprise Ambassador for the UK Cabinet Office between 2007 and 2010.
- Founder of One Earth Innovation, a green product incubator, and founder of Ecocap Ltd., which patented a more recyclable bottle cap design.
- Award-winning documentary maker whose film Amerikan Passport won Best Documentary at Slamdance 1999.
Biography
Belu was launched in 2002 as a bottled water company built around an environmental thesis the rest of the category had not yet taken seriously. The business committed 100% of net profits to clean water projects through WaterAid, made the UK’s first compostable corn-based plastic bottle in 2006, and was positioned as the world’s first carbon neutral bottled water brand.
That is the kind of operating evidence boards now need behind sustainability claims. The gap between a net zero announcement and the supply chain decisions that deliver it is where most ESG narratives lose credibility, and a founder who has worked through compostable materials, packaging redesign, and a charitable profit structure is talking from inside that problem rather than around it.
The wider track record stretches the same instinct across products and policy. One Earth Innovation works as a green product incubator across compostable plastics, sustainable horticulture, and eco-friendly consumer goods. Ecocap, separately, patented a more recyclable bottle cap design. Recognition from the Schwab Foundation as UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008, and a three-year Social Enterprise Ambassador role with the UK Cabinet Office, give the commercial story a policy-level frame.
Before the eco-entrepreneur chapter, Paget was a journalist and filmmaker, directing Amerikan Passport, a documentary shot across war zones at the end of the Cold War that won Best Documentary at Slamdance 1999. That earlier instinct, going where most cameras did not, runs through the later environmental work.
Key speaking topics
- Sustainable product design and packaging
- Carbon neutral supply chains
- Social enterprise business models
- Green consumer marketing
- Climate-led innovation portfolios
- Mission-driven fundraising and investor relations
Ideal for
- Boards and ExCos translating ESG commitments into operating decisions
- Heads of Sustainability, Packaging, and Supply Chain in consumer goods and FMCG
- Founders and investors building or backing impact-led ventures
- Marketing and brand leaders working on credible green positioning
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of where sustainability ambitions break against product, packaging, and supply chain realities.
- Specific examples of how a charitable purpose can be structured inside a commercial P&L without becoming marketing varnish.
- A sharper read on what investors, regulators, and consumers will actually credit as substantive environmental progress.
- Practical reference points from a founder who has shipped first-of-kind sustainable products at commercial scale.