How Join the Pipe sent 9,500 water bottles to schoolchildren in Burkina Faso

Every year, Join the Pipe ships a full container of reusable water bottles from its warehouse in Gouda to schoolchildren in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, in partnership with the ASAP Foundation. The most recent shipment, in July 2025, sent over 9,500 bottles: 5,000 in the 1-litre size and 4,550 in the 500ml size, both blank Nairobi bottles made from bio-based HDPE.

Where the bottles go

The ASAP Foundation works on education and community projects around Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso's second-largest city. Join the Pipe has shipped a container to the foundation there on a recurring basis, and the July 2025 shipment is the most recent confirmed run: 9,550 bottles plus jerry carry accessories, loaded straight from Join the Pipe's own storage facility onto a freight container for the journey to West Africa.

How this connects to Buy One Give One

Join the Pipe funds shipments like this one through its Buy One Give One model: every bottle sold through the webshop or a branded order funds one donated to a child without reliable access to clean drinking water. There's no multiplier claimed beyond that, one sold, one given. The Bobo-Dioulasso shipment is one of several recurring donation routes, alongside projects Join the Pipe's foundation runs in Kenya, Congo and Sierra Leone.

The bottle itself

The Nairobi is Join the Pipe's flagship bottle model, available in 0.5L, 1.0L and 1.5L sizes. Like the rest of the range it's made from 99% sugarcane-based bioplastic, chemically identical to conventional HDPE and CO2-negative to produce, with a Braskem "I'm green" certification, EU food-contact compliance, and no BPA. That's the same bottle sold as a 1.0L or 500ml product in Join the Pipe's own shop, produced blank for donation shipments like this one rather than printed with a city design or a client logo.

Part of a wider foundation

Join the Pipe is registered in the Netherlands as an ANBI foundation, meaning donations go directly to projects rather than covering operating costs, which are funded separately. Its projects page lists the foundation's active work, including school water-access installations in Kenya and the BluePump hand-pump program, alongside recurring shipments like this one to Burkina Faso. Anyone buying a bottle or branded order from Join the Pipe funds the same donation pipeline behind the Bobo-Dioulasso container. More on the mission behind it is on the mission page.