This time I unpacked the brain of Paul Kupfer, co-founder and CEO of soulbottles (@soulbottles) - an amazing Berlin-based social startup. What they do? soulbottles produces the world’s cleanest drinking bottles and is on a mission to give people all over the world access to clean drinking water and sanitation. How they do it? Well, by offering soul-lutions through making sustainability cool, fun and sexy. They basically create colorful designs that rock and put them on beautiful glass bottles. On top, soulbottles are 100% made in Germany and 100% free of plastic.

I’m very very passionate about clean drinking water, because it is a global issue absolutely solvable! There’s no technology barriers whatsoever, it’s linked to giving access to resources - and everyone of us can really help to make it happen... soulbottles is not only encouraging people to drink tap water & eliminating plastic waste. They also give 1 euro for each bottle sold to Viva Con Agua - a really cool charity that is improving access to clean water in developing countries. So it’s really a win-win-win. You win, because you have a cool, beautifully designed and durable drinking bottle that everyone around you will be curious about. soulbottles wins, because they can sustain their business and raise awareness for a cause they believe in. And rural communities - in this case in Nepal - win because they get access to clean drinking water.

To give you some numbers: Soulbottles has supplied 8.000 households with 40.000 with access to clean drinking water, donating 37.000 euros of their profits. It’s a story about social entrepreneurship. Of shaping the for-purpose economy. Paul and his co-founder Georg built a social business completely from scratch at the age of 24! I tell you, their journey is full-on fascinating.

Some of the highlights you’ll learn more about:

• Why you don’t need to be a born business crack to build a social business from scratch
• How a bottle of vodka can become the basis for a brilliant social enterprise
• How moments of crisis (in this case the London riots) can change your life for the better
• Why a “just see if it works” mentality is crucial to get you started - The meaning of “company” in our current system
• Why raising money for clean water is much easier than for clean toilets
• Who inspired Paul the most on his journey & the biggest challenge soulbottles had to overcome in the last 5 years
• The current global state of clean drinking water & what plastic bottle producers have in common with the tobacco industry
• A moment Paul is most proud of - even though he hasn’t been there himself
• What Paul does that drives everyone in his team crazy
• Where you should go to connect with the Berlin social startup scene
• The realization that the biggest structures around us are human made

That is not all: we talked about a Kung-fu master in sales, Paul’s favorite secret spot in Berlin, the weird relationship Germans have with tap water, all the other amazing world changing projects that soul bottles is involved in and and and!

Oh yes, why are soulbottles made of glass? One reason: it tastes SO much better. Plus, glass is a great material that can be 100% recycled! Soulbottles are made from around 30-50% of recycled glass. You can read up everything about the production and materials used on their website, I drop it into the show notes - as for our interview, I rather wanted to extract those stories from Paul, that you can’t read up on the interwebs.Another great fact about soulbottles: it is a certified B-Corp! Actually, they’ve been of the first 100 companies in Germany to join the movement.

Another great fact about soulbottles: it is a certified B-Corp! Actually, they’ve been of the first 100 companies in Germany to join the movement.

NOW, please meet Paul Kupfer from soulbottles. Check out the full interview incl. transcript, pictures and all links & shownotes on: www.greenmeberlin.com/podcast-soulbottles

 

BEFORE YOU GO

Just a quick behind the scenes of GreenMe Berlin: over the last few weeks, we’ve been pumping all our energy into live events. We’ve been running a number of green guided tours through Berlin, visiting lots of exciting projects and bringing together a bunch of like-minded people. It really fills me with so much joy to build those connections. People from all different backgrounds learn about the eco-minded projects in the city, meet the people who run them and see how sustainability can be linked to so much passion and positive mindset. Check out www.greenmeberlin.com/tours

And if you wanna be part of one our next tours, keep an eye on Facebook for the public ones, or simply shoot me an email to [email protected] and we’ll curate your very own, customized experience. Exciting times ahead guys!

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That’s it !!! The next episode will come out again at the last Friday of the month, so stay tuned, and have a blast while going green!

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