Late last year 42BELOW Vodka ran a Sustainable Cocktail Showcase competition to encourage bartenders from across Australia and New Zealand to submit their own sustainable cocktail to be in to win the eco-trip of a lifetime to Bali.
The talented mixologists came up with a plethora of ideas as to how to create delicious yet sustainable cocktails by reducing, reusing and recycling regular cocktail ingredients, upcycling fruit and using spent coffee grinds to name a few – the winners of the competition have now been announced.
Two Aussie and two Kiwi bartenders will be off to Bali on an eco-trip of a lifetime. The winners are…
- Australia: Tioni Naslund (Flaggerdoot, VIC) & Honni Cox (Hades Hula House, SA)
- New Zealand: Juleon Green (Bedford Soda and Liquor) & Alex Vowles (Hawthorn Lounge)
They’ll all be off on an eco-trip to Bali to see first-hand the gross stuff that humans are doing to a beautiful island right on our door-step. And they’ll also work with some better humans who are doing something about it.
Our prize winners will be meeting with our innovative Trash-tech partner, Grinngo and be taken on a Tour-de-Trash, helping save the ocean from plastic pollutants, working in recycling and sorting plants, and 
training local Bali bartenders on how to run a sustainable cocktail programme. This will be life-changing for these bartenders, and they will come back and continue to lead the way in sustainable bartending back home.
An all-star, all-time vodka judging panel assessed the Sustainability and Creativity of the cocktails while over 4,000 votes from the ANZ public counted towards the Popularity.
Head judge Kane Stanford, 42BELOW Global Brand Manager said of the process: “There were some amazing drinks for us to sift though. We were so stoked to see such creative approaches to sustainable cocktails. No straws is easy, but just the beginning, so it was great to see such innovation from our industry leaders. It was a tough gig to judge, but in the end the winners were clear and deserved. Well played, folks.”
Honni’s cocktail, One-in-a-Melon, blew the judges away with her zero waste take on the classic (but super wasteful) bubble tea, while Tioni’s 42 Reasons cleaned up with a hyper-local foraging strategy, taking left over waste from his restaurant and bar.
Juleon’s focus on highlighting the plight of our ol’ mate the honey bee with Vitamin Bee was sweet as (sorry!) and Alex’s root-to-flower-to-seed approach for Below the Bramble was amazing and highlighted with a lemon husk coaster!
The 42BELOW Sustainable Cocktail Showcase aims to promote and celebrate the great work that awesome bartenders are doing to create cocktails which are both sustainable and yum. Gross old humans are churning out so much trash on the reg that an island of trash 5 times the size of NZ has accumulated in the Pacific.
