In a city like Chicago you gotta make moves, yet moves can be tiring while rolling around a Jones Gaba Cooler barrel. Sollution, hire a Jones Gaba-Bot to control it. Constructing one of these is easy, just take a Jones Gaba Cooler barrell and mount it on a Segway!
Jones Gaba (not an energy drink) is our new tea-juice blend containing Gaba (weird). Gaba is a natural amino acid that occurs in your brain and increases your alpha brain waves. More alpha brain waves creates a calming and focus in your body or a feeling of in “the zone” . This brain beverage is great for studying, gaming, or brief levitation. It comes in 4 flavors: Nectarine, Fuji Apple, Grapefruit, and Lemon Honey Black Tea.
Citizens of Chicago, if this beverage peaks your interest, head to Wrigleyville before the Cubs game tomorrow and find the Gaba-bot before it’s too late. Rumor is Sweet Lou has 3 Jones Gabas before every game and that’s why he’s so calm. Don’t believe me that Gaba works, check out our team at Jones HQ playing MIND BALL!!!
Who’s down with STP? Everylast Jones Hom-ie! No we’re not talking about Motor Oil or the Stone Temple Pilots, the Jones Team is trainging hard for the annual Seattle to Portland ride! Now I know what you’re thinking,
“Don’t only evil people ride bikes?”
And the answer is no, that is a common stereotype that we are trying to eradicate.
Our training started off with powering our entire office with Stationary bikes for Earth Day! Since then our Jones Team has been riding non-stop. Every week our Gung Ho HR director Susan has us ferrying over to All-Star fitness in groups for Spin Class so we can sweat out MF Grape droplets while listening to Lady Gaga!
CEO Joth Ricci and the Amazing Spinning Women!
Aside from some intense spinning our team typically meets for weekend rides or rides their bikes to work. Unfortunately everyone can’t be a young Lance Armstrong so the Jones RV will be trailing our team stocked with food, water, camping supplies, and plenty of Gaba and 24c. The road will be tough and arduous, but having healthy employees is important so Jones will continue to train for the STP and will gladly challenge Coke or Pepsi to a spin-off anyday of the week. Well bye for now, I gotta go ride to Whole Foods and get myself some man-fuel. Those STP-ing it up, we’ll see you there, and for the rest of the planet I will film it in a montage format to the tune of “You sexy thang” by Hot Chocolate. Don’t forgot to follow us on Twitter and Facebook!
Glass:100% recyclable, 15-20% post-consumer recycled material used to manufacture
Light-weighting PET for 24C: Reduction in energy to produce and reduction of material in land-fill
Cardboard reduction in carriers: Approximate 7.0% reduction in amount of cardboard used; equivalent of over 150,000 carriers per year! Reduction of material in land-fill and 100% recyclable
Labels: 100% recyclable
Bottling: New partnerships developed in LA and Memphis to reduce fuel and carbon emissions
Branding/Marketing: Using label and 4-pack real estate to promote recycling through special series of recycling-themed labels in 2008
Goals
To minimize use, consumption or disposal of all non sustainable materials
Encourage recycling
Make environmentally responsible purchases
Plan efficient transportation at an employee level and freight level
Further the sustainability of packaging and materials in office
How we’re going to do it!
Only print when absolutely necessary, printing on both sides and using an eco-friendly font.
Conserving as much electricity as possible: turning equipment and lights off after business hours.
Eliminate all disposable flatware and plates in the office and create a compost bin for food scraps and paper products.
Purchase papers with 80% recycled material or higher, buy local to decrease freight, purchase low VOC carpets, paints, etc.
Increase telecommunications capabilities to decrease traveling for meetings, set up inner-office carpool program, and purchase C02 emissions to offset air travel.
Increase environmental awareness in the office through meetings, emails, message boards, and blogs.
Create flex-time or condensed work weeks to decrease carbon footprint of commuting as well as energy used in office.
What do you think about when you think about Australia? Kangaroos, Boomerangs, Fosters, Crocodile Dundee, Koalas, Australian Biscuits, Rescuers Down Under, or the movie Australia, well if that’s the case then you’re all a bunch of stereotyping fools. Now when you do your Australian accent to impress your friends say, “Jones…Australian for Soda” or “a Dingo drank my Jones!” (our stereotypes were used for shameless Jones plugs and we are now no better than you). Why should you make this connection you ask, because we’re in South Australia right now so check out this skate demo and Jones sampling!
Turns out the Australians like to ride too, and what better fuel than a delicious sugary beverage! Don’t believe, take renowned celebrity actors opinions Russel Crowe and Hugh Jackman! I mean who knows Australia better than these two!
With camera crews, press, and tons of people coming to mini-jonesers and celebrities alike riding together you can imagine that there was a great deal of excitement. Some handled this excitement quite well…and others did not.
This goes to show that Jones in any country, any atmosphere, and regardless of who shows up is a solid option and always makes for a good time. Thanks Austrailia for taking us in, there will be plenty more Jones there soon for the lot of you that haven’t found it yet. As we speak there is a container full of Jones sitting on a tanker right now somewhere in the Pacific headed your way, so G’day and goodbye my friends from Down Under, hopefully I will be visiting you soon!
Seagal, Bike Enthusiast, Giant Bird, Seahawks Safety, and local citizen
It was a day of momentous effort from the entire Jones office to keep our company fully operational with strictly Pedal Power! I’d like to say it was easy but I would be lying, pedaling from 5:30am until 5:00pm damn near killed me. I slept like a baby when I got home that night, and not in the actual sense of sleeping like a baby like I normally do where I sleep for 2-3 hours and then wake up crying but more like I passed out with the lights on and my contacts in.
As you can see from the picture above we had some help, and believe me we needed it. Not one of those people pictured above was an employee, so the community powered our office so we could actually get some work done, even though Blitz (the Hawk dressed in a football uniform with crazy huge biceps) was looking a bit famished in this shot. It was inspiring to be able to do something great for our environment, and also great for the community and have the support of so many people without asking a thing in return. Colin McFeron from Recycled Cycles donated all the bikes, built them, and rode all day long. Dan Gross from the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab diagrammed out the entire process, calculated every Kilowatt of power necessary to pull this off, and wired, constructed, and tested everything to ensure we were generating enough power. Chris Ager, an engineer and friend of Colin and Dan also helped build all the bikes and work the circuitry. Interstate Batteries donated all the batteries necessary to pull this off, Piecora donated pizza for everyone for the day, Tap Plastic donated the plastic mounts for the bikes, and Seahawks, Seagals, former Seattle Supersonic James Donaldson, and many people from the community assisted us in making this happen.
Through the glitz and the glam of all the media coverage Jones stayed low key and managed to get out orders, crunch numbers, and cut POs. Next year we will have to do it bigger so we’ll need suggestions. Maybe power the whole street, the whole block, or even the White House! Either way saving the environment is contagious, especially when you’re all hopped up on endorphins. So now in no particular order awards for Earth Day!:
Most BA Rider: 58 year old guy of the street who pedaled harder than anyone else for an hour and half in rocking bike shorts. When he cramped up we thought he’d get off but like a prize-fighter in the 10th round he just asked for a banana, skinned it, and powered through.
Longest accumulated Bike Time: Susan from HR (self proclaimed)
Most time spent waving into the web cam without actually riding: Emily Sales Associate
MVP: Amanda Drummond from Marketing
Least Favorite Bike: #14 Death Bike (the gear setting was twice as hard as any other bike)
Best Cameo: Old Sea Captain wearing a Shawn Kemp Jersey
Best Awkward Interview Angle: Josh Groff, ground shot in between legs.
Thanks again to everyone for the long hours spent, the thousands of revolutions pedaled, and the love shown. Here are some pics for the day and some links to stories written about us.
With every great plan comes obstacles, as for our kick ass plan to power our entire office with pedal power (generated from stationary bikes hooked up to batteries) there have been some snafus. The parts you ordered didn’t arrive, or arrived and didn’t work, or everything is going to plan but there are a bunch of rogue engineer friends in your office handling their business and you can’t help them because you have no idea how to solder so you blog about it.
As we improvise into the night our crew grows weary, so we order pizza and drink…soda. Rob from Opps fires up his I-Pod and we rock to some Phil Collins Su Su Sudio. So far I’ve been to Wallingford, Tukwila, and then back to Wallingford getting new V Belts, chargeable flash lights, and an aerodynamic outfit for my stationary bike ride tomorrow. Josh was thrown for a loop temporarily when shown his bike seat due to his Wyoming upbringing he had never parted with his banana seat/front ET basket combo.
Focus has been regained though and we will keep you posted via Twitter, Facebook, Morse Code, and smoke signals so we’ll keep you posted but head in tomorrow and check us out!
Jones Soda Co is a little bit of a different company, agreed. So we tend to attract a little bit of a different crowd. This tends to be awesome because we end up with a lot of sweet stuff that we get to play with.
Firstly, when is the last time a prisoner drew you a picture, well for us it was earlier this week. Our friend Laura at Yakima County spent her consolatory time sketching a sweet-ass Jones picture for us.
To kick off Jones Sodas’ new “Keeping It Real” sustainability campaign we decided to celebrate by going off the electrical grid for Earth Day. How can we do this and stay in business for the day? By generating electricity through human powered bicycles of course! Sounds easy right? Sure, that’s what we thought. Pulling it off in two weeks? Piece of cake. Here’s how it all went down:
Step 1. Figure out how to make power through bicycle generated energy. We started with the internet, the best way to find information quickly. We found a great website that helped with the inspiration for our plan: www.pedalpowergenerator.com. Using this basic model as a starting point, we reached out to Dan Gross and Pierre Mourad of the UW Applied Physics Lab and Colin McFeron of local bike shop Recycle Cycles to help with the planning. After several more hours of research we designed a model that would fit within our budget and time constraints.
Step 2. Gathering the parts. Nothing shouts good weekend fun like spending your Saturday at your local car parts lot. Dan, Colin and Amanda headed up to You-Pull-It in Lynwood to gather used alternators for the project. Bringing in used alternators for the model was a great opportunity to include recycled parts into our model design. Four hours later with 12 alternators pulled, we stopped off at Olive Garden for some fine dining. We were definitely the filthiest people in the restaurant.
Following all you can eat breadsticks and cheese, we headed to the Schuck’s on Ballinger Way and met Zach and Jonathan, two incredibly helpful guys that tested all 12 of our alternators for free and hooked us up with some parts we needed in honor of Earth Day. Then we headed to Home Depot – which creepily reminds me of my childhood, to collect some other things we needed. Then we set off the to UW lab to test our goods.
Step 3. Building a prototype. Our first crack at the prototype was pretty Gerry-rigged. As you can see in the photo, we attempted to hook up a unit to test the current while spinning the alternator with the bike wheel. This attempt wasn’t able to tell us how much power we can actually generate; however, it did show that our plan will work with the correct set up. Unfortunately, at this time we didn’t have all the parts to build the first prototype. So we headed off to Teddy’s Tavern to call it a night and celebrate a hard day of work.
Coming up next: Building the Prototype Take 2.
Note to Earthlings: Turns out we’ve been using up a butt load of our natural resources over the passed 250 years and it’s becoming quite the environmental dilemma. To sum up more scientifically, I’ll refer to Mario 3. In Mario 3 when you have 99 lives and two full panels of Mario World Contents you tend to play the game with a sort of carefree reckless bravado than before. Soon your attempting dangerous leaps in high risk scenarios and frivolously wasting your, frog suits, whistles, leafs, and other wondrous paraphernalia. Well this was Earth at the beginning of the 19th century (1800s) when resources were seemingly endless. Fast forward a couple hundred years and our world is looking like this!
Jones hit up Austin Texas’ Music and Film Festival South by Southwest last weekend for the second year running. SXSW, better summed up as Mardi Gras II, is a cacophony of youngsters flooding Austin’s 6th street downtown, hopping in and out of venues and bars listening to the hundreds of bands that come to this musical summit every year. Well this year we specifically sponsored the event, Mess With Texas, created by comedian David Cross.
In proper Jones form we barreled the RV into Austin and found a spot to post up right behind the stage of Mess With Texas. As the masses rolled in we tossed them free shirts, soda, Jones Gaba, and pretty much anything else that would detach from the RV. In between bands Keith Morris from The Circle Jerks came into the Jones RV to chill out before the show and prepare his set list.
Once the show got fully under way we posted up on
top of the RV much l
ike in a Zombie crisis scenario and had our socks rocked off by the Black Lips, Kid sister, Japanther, Shrines, and many more.
And the answer is no, that is a common stereotype that we are trying to eradicate.
Jones Soda (43)
