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Employees at Liberty Specialty Markets set new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title in support of WaterAid

Beating the current record with an outstanding 709 Liberty employees passing a virtual water bottle across the globe

Employees at Liberty Specialty Markets (Liberty), part of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, have set a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for the largest online video chain passing a water bottle. The new world record was officially confirmed by Guinness World Records on 7 June and raised a total of £1,500 for WaterAid. 709 global Liberty staff took part by filming themselves virtually handing over a bottle of water from one to another. The footage was then combined into a single film. The previous world record was 464 people.

The record attempt was in aid of Liberty’s global charity partner WaterAid. Liberty encouraged each person who participated to donate to WaterAid’s work to help give communities access to clean water, enabling them to withstand the impacts of climate change. WaterAid employees were also encouraged to take part. 

Nigel Davenport, Liberty's Group General Counsel and the Executive Sponsor for Responsible Business, said: “Our Corporate Social Responsibility programme supports charity partners such as WaterAid and works with sustainable businesses like Ocean Bottle. Achieving this goal was great fun and has made a real difference for WaterAid. The attempt has raised awareness of the valuable work they do to make clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere."

WaterAid has been Liberty’s corporate charity partner for seven years. Kate Holme, WaterAid’s Strategic Partners Director, said: “We’re so grateful for Liberty Specialty Markets’ ongoing support and have been inspired to see so many people from around the world coming together to break a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title, while also helping transform lives in some of the world’s poorest communities."

“Clean water, decent sanitation and good hygiene help improve lives and livelihoods, as well as enabling people to build resilience against the effects of climate change.”

Liberty bought the bottles used for the challenge from Ocean Bottle, who create reusable bottles that are fully recyclable, made from stainless steel and recycled ocean-bound plastic.  Each bottle funds the collection of 11.4 kgs of ocean-bound plastic and in total the bottles purchased by Liberty funded the collection of over 11,000 kgs of ocean plastic, the equivalent of one million plastic bottles.

A two minute video summarising Liberty's record-breaking effort is available to view here.