A step-by-step guide

How to Start Buy Food with Plastic in Your Country

Do you want to bring Buy Food with Plastic to your country or community? This page explains — in plain language — exactly how our model works, step by step, so anyone can understand it.

Our model has been developed and tested across different countries and communities. While every location is different, our experience has taught us one important lesson: start small, learn from the community, build local capacity, and only then scale. The long-term vision is to transform plastic waste into economic value while creating income opportunities for people in underserved communities. Here is how we approach it, phase by phase.

1 Start with the Community

The first step is not buying machines or building a recycling facility. It is understanding the community.

You need a strong local Country Manager or project lead — someone intrinsically motivated, deeply connected to the local context, and willing to build the initiative from the ground up.

Once these questions are answered, the best way to learn is simple: organise your first Buy Food with Plastic Community Event.

How a Community Event works

People from the community collect plastic bottles and exchange them for a warm meal. As an example, one meal can be exchanged for approximately 20 plastic bottles. Depending on the community, around 200–400 people can participate in an event.

Whenever possible, the food is purchased locally and prepared by local cooks. This means the event does more than collect plastic — it creates temporary income and keeps money within the local economy.

The exact model can vary from place to place:

Our preference is always to create as much local employment as possible.

Why we continue these events

Community Events are philanthropic by nature. Including food, staff, logistics and organisation, the full cost can reach approximately CHF 8–10 per participant. The value of the collected plastic alone will generally not finance these events. And that is okay — because their value goes far beyond plastic collection.

The Community Event is our gateway into a community. It allows us to understand:

• How do people live?
• What are their main challenges?
• What do they need most?
• How much income do households have?
• What role does plastic waste play locally?
• Can collecting plastic create a meaningful additional income opportunity?

At the same time, these events bring people together: there is food, music, education and activities for children. In communities where recreational opportunities can be limited, these days can become genuine community celebrations. That is why Community Events remain at the heart of Buy Food with Plastic.

We recommend starting with one event per month in one or two nearby communities, and operating this way for approximately 6–12 months before making major investments.

2 From Community Events to a Circular Business

Something interesting often happens once the first communities start participating: neighbouring communities ask us to come to them as well. That is when the second phase can begin.

Instead of asking everyone to travel to an event, Buy Food with Plastic goes directly to the communities.

The Plastic for Income Truck

Depending on local roads and infrastructure, a medium-sized truck can travel from community to community and purchase plastic directly from households.

But before deciding what people receive in return, ask them — different communities have different priorities. In some of our communities in Ghana and Nicaragua, cash is most useful. In Mumbai, necessities such as cooking oil, rice and school materials can be particularly relevant.

The principle is simple: give people something they genuinely need in exchange for plastic that has economic value.

Unlike the Community Events, the objective here is different — this activity should become financially self-sustaining, and ideally profitable.

Build a small processing hub

To make the economics work, collected plastic should not simply be accumulated. A small warehouse or processing hub is needed where the material can be:

collected → sorted → cleaned where necessary → baled or shredded → sold

Processing the material increases its value and creates additional local jobs. The revenue generated from selling recycled material should increasingly finance:

• Plastic purchasing
• Salaries
• Transportation
• Warehouse operations
• Maintenance
• Expansion into additional communities

The goal is to build a local circular economy that can eventually operate without depending on continuous donations.

3 Build Recycling Infrastructure

When Phase 2 works, the challenge eventually changes: the warehouse starts filling up, collection volumes increase, and more communities want to participate.

At that point, it may make sense to make a much larger investment. This can include purchasing or leasing land, building a larger Material Recovery and Recycling Facility, and investing approximately CHF 500,000 to CHF 1+ million in professional recycling equipment, depending on the technology and local market.

Instead of selling relatively low-value collected plastic, the facility can process it into higher-quality recycled raw materials that can potentially be sold to local or international industrial buyers. This is where the model has the potential to become a scalable circular business.

The objective is simple: use the economic value of plastic waste to finance its own collection and recycling — while creating income opportunities and jobs for local communities.

This is currently the journey we are pursuing in Ghana, where we are transitioning from Phase 2 toward a significantly larger recycling operation.

Additional opportunities

Even before building a large recycling facility, some plastic fractions can potentially be transformed locally into products. Bottle caps, rings and other suitable plastics can, for example, become:

• Combs
• Sunglasses
• Accessories
• Household products
• Other locally manufactured products

This creates another opportunity to turn waste into value, develop skills, create jobs and raise awareness about the circular economy.

The most important lesson: don't start too big

Even if significant funding is available from the beginning, we recommend starting with Phase 1. A recycling facility can be bought relatively quickly. Building community trust, understanding local realities and developing a capable local organisation takes much longer.

Start with Community Events. Listen. Learn. Build trust. Test the local recycling market. Develop the team. Then scale.

Our experience suggests spending approximately 6–12 months validating the model locally before making major infrastructure investments.

The Buy Food with Plastic journey, visualised

Here is the whole path from a single community event to a scalable circular economy, side by side:

Start with one community. Prove that it works. Then scale the impact.