In just a few short days, a small group of entrepreneurial designers and engineers has raised over $50,000 to fund Who Gives a Crap, a business that will offer sustainable, comfortable toilet paper and give 50% of the profits to sanitation efforts in developing countries. The team launched their campaign through the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo with a pledge that co-founder Simon Griffiths could be viewed via live webcam sitting on a toilet until their goal amount was met. Lucky for him, his stay on the bowl didn’t last long—speaking through their open wallets, fans made it clear that they want to buy T.P. that supports some of the 2.4 billion people worldwide impacted by poor sanitation.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdWZ8WVv6qk[/youtube]
Who Gives a Crap’s simple proposal offers a superior consumable product that pretty much all of us have to stock up on, and the potential for consumers to support a thoroughly worthwhile cause while doing so. The donated funds will go to WaterAid, a non-profit with a mission to bring clean water and sanitation to the world’s poorest countries.
The Who Gives a Crap venture is a story all about relationships. Griffiths’ founding partner in Australia, Jehan Ratnatunga, is a fellow engineering classmate. The pair teamed up with American product designer Danny Alexander during a six week course for aspiring entrepreneurs called the Unreasonable Institute. Knowing that they shared similar mind-sets, the team pushed forward on a two year journey to form the plan behind Who Gives a Crap. During that time they developed a relationship with an Australian paper company to manufacture a soft, chemical-free toilet tissue made from 100% recycled post consumer waste.
Now that the team has met their initial $50,000 goal—which will enable the team to stock their first order of toilet paper—they are stretching further to gather $100k. With that amount they hope to get the product into Australian retail stores before the end of 2012. There is still a chance to to buy-inif you want to help the fund, and receive part of the first order that will ship to the US and Australia!
+Who Gives a Crap Via indieGoGo
