German company crowd-funds sustainable, ethical condoms

BERLIN, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- A group of German entrepreneurs is using a crowd-funding site to help launch a company that produces sustainable condoms.

The company, called Einhorn, the German word for unicorn, would be the world's first ethical and sustainable condom company, the group's Startnext crowd-funding website says.

"We got sick of complaining about ugly, unsustainable, non-environmentally conscious exploited products, so we decided to make a better one ourselves and make it really sexy, cool," Einhorn co-founder Waldemar Zeiler told The Guardian. "If you want to do sustainable things, you have to compete with regular products that people want to buy because it's cool, not because they're trying to be good."

Einhorn started out looking for a minimum of $56,000 in funding, with an ultimate target of $339,000. Within 48 hours of launching the site, the company reached its minimum and about a week later had raised $77,500.

"We had no clue what we were doing," Zeiler said. "But we worked together with a university in Germany [who are] experts on sustainable rubber production. We'll go to Malaysia with German scientists and go through our plantations. Then we'll test the soil and stay over there analyzing stuff and make things better. This includes making sure the minimum wage is paid to workers and knowing what's in the condoms.

"Right now, we're 10 percent sustainable," he added. "Our goal is to have an 80 percent to 90 percent sustainable product in five years. Every time we improve, we'll put it online, and you can see what has changed. Even if people say something isn't possible, we'll aim for the best-case scenario and if we don't make our target, we'll get close and say so.