Man spent two days on toilet to show he gives a crap

Australian entrepreneur has spent the last 51 hours sat on the throne, raising cash for the developing world by fighting the good fight on sanitation. And he's winning. Griffiths is a man on a mission which, like the Who Gives A Crap toilet paper he's selling (he'll split the profits 50-50 with WaterAid), is two-fold:

•Step #1: Raise $50,000 to fund the first production run of Good Goods' socially responsible bog roll; and

•Step #2: Get off the toilet, raise more money, and build toilets in places that really, really need them.



Griffiths might be crazy enough to sit on a toilet at his Melbourne-based Poo HQ until he's raised $50k, but he's no drifter. This is a man who, with university degrees in engineering and economics, turned his back on a lucrative white-collar career to change the world for the better. His passion to do something meaningful for sanitation has taken him nearly everywhere in the developing world. Needless to say, he knows a lot about toilets. "It's borne out of using disgusting toilets myself and being concerned for my own personal hygiene. It's a much, much higher risk for people who live in those circumstances," he said.

The Who Gives a Crap campaign has been the sexy hook on an unsexy topic - sanitation. It's not sexy, but it matters; around the world, 4000 children under the age of 5 die from diarrhoea-related diseases every day. Every single day. Griffiths is on a mission to change that. Not by 2070, or 2080, as current estimates suggest would be the break-even point on world sanitation. No, he's cooked up a new way of raising money: "consumer-driven philanthropy". "This whole concept moves astronomically far away from what the average Australian thinks about donating," he said.


YouTube link.

"It's not about pulling on heart strings or giving something extra from your paycheck. It's about selling a product that's fairly priced, the quality is just as good, and the purchase of that product is motivated by want and not guilt. Who Gives A Crap is about taking an unsexy product and turning it into something that's incredibly fun. Toilet paper is all about pillows and puppies and babies. But we want to promote a product that's not traditional, yet it's soft, it's great and it works. We're doing something really energising and enjoyable."