FAQs

Transparency is our top priority! With our impact reports, which we create after each activity, you can see exactly what impact your donation has. After the donations have been distributed, we regularly post updates on social media, where you can see live how your donation is being used. So, if you don't already follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, now is the time. If you still have questions about the amount you donated, you can contact us anytime by phone or email (contact@buyfoodwithplastic.org)!

The idea behind Buy Food with Plastic is unique because it addresses several urgent problems at once. It creates hope, provides opportunities for education and self-fulfillment, and offers help where it is needed most. The Buy Food with Plastic concept empowers local people to tackle their problems themselves and creates jobs. Buy Food with Plastic is simple and scalable.

Buy Food with Plastic is an international organization based in Zurich that addresses two major issues: plastic pollution and poverty.

Working with local teams, we organize events in Ghana, Nicaragua, and India where local people can pay for their meals with plastic bottles. The collected plastic bottles are then sorted, cleaned, and recycled into beautiful and useful products.

Click here to learn more about our concept.

We do not want to bring the Buy Food with Plastic concept to countries where it is not needed. In Nicaragua, Ghana, and India, our concept met with great interest from the local people, and it was the intrinsic motivation of the local country managers to change something in their communities that convinced us to implement the idea in these three countries. We have also received inquiries from other countries such as Morocco, South Africa, Colombia, and Sri Lanka; these inquiries reach us mainly through our social media channels. But unfortunately, at the moment, we do not have the resources to operate in all of these countries. However, our long-term goal is to implement our concept in all communities where it is needed most!

In some of our target countries, there is already an intact recycling infrastructure, so we only have to transport the bottles there after our events. Whenever possible, we want to use the existing networks and work with local solutions. But what if there is no such infrastructure nearby? In Nicaragua, Central America, this is exactly the case. So why not become part of the solution? At the end of 2021, we therefore set up our own upcycling factory in the El Astillero region, where plastic waste can now be sorted, washed, and processed into new products. In doing so, we create local jobs, and with the profits from our upcycled products, we can close the economic cycle in the long term and partially refinance our events. Our first product is a surf comb, which you can also find in our online shop. But the journey has just begun, we are always open to new product ideas!

Buy Food with Plastic was born in response to the ecological and political situation we experienced in Nicaragua in the summer of 2018. Huge amounts of plastic littered the coast. Furthermore, the political crisis escalated and had serious consequences for the local population. Tourism almost disappeared, and many hotels and restaurants had to close. The locals lost their jobs, and families struggled to feed their children. We quickly realized that these problems also exist in other countries around the world. We decided not to stand idly by and took action.

Over the past two years, with the help of our local teams on the ground, we have been able to provide more than 62,000 meals for those in need, create jobs, rescue approximately 45,500 plastic bottles from the environment, and recycle them into beautiful and useful products. But this is just the beginning! Join us on our journey to make the world a better place, one step at a time.

Click here to visit our Impact page.

Our administrative costs amount to around 115,000 CHF per year. This includes costs for IT, banking, human resources, finance, our office, salaries, and reserves. If you would like a closer look at our finances, please feel free to contact us. We love transparency and are happy to show you how much we receive in donations and how we use them specifically on the ground.