One Man’s Quest to Create a Plastic Free Self-Filtering Water Bottle

Sometimes companies are founded because someone sees an unfulfilled need. Ban Kander, Founder and CEO of WELLY, LLC saw a need for a self-filtering reusable water bottle that is made entirely free of plastic. 

Although he started the journey to create the WELLY Bottle two and a half years ago, it really began after his mom passed away. During his senior year of college, she was diagnosed with liver cancer. He missed his college graduation to be there when she passed away. He moved to New York City to start what he described to me as a “9-to-5 job.” 

Reading the book Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes and One for One, planted a desire within Kander to create a company that would also be philanthropic. After moving to London to do sales for the company he worked for at the time, he realized the tap water there just “didn’t taste good,” as he put it. However, he started drinking more water during that time after seeing his girlfriend carrying around a water bottle everywhere. 

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Photo: WELLY LLC

Gina-Marie Cheeseman is a central California-based journalist who writes about sustainability, environmental issues, and healthy living. With a degree in journalism and a passion for social responsibility, she writes for a number of online publications. She believes that collaboration between the public and private sectors can help solve many problems facing the planet and its people. Mashable.com named Cheeseman as one of the “75 Environmentalists to Follow on Twitter.”