OUTER PLANET 54 PETplanet Insider Vol. 23 No. 07+08/22 www.petpla.net OUTER PLANET Buy food with plastic bottles and get recycling going at the same time PET bottles as a currency The idea came to Khalil Radi during a surfing holiday in Nicaragua in 2018. The student at the time heard from locals that they could no longer feed their children because they had lost their jobs due to the political situation. At the same time, he saw with his own eyes how plastic bottles ended up as litter or were even used as fuel. Suddenly, Khalil had the idea that an event where locals could buy food with plastic bottles could solve the two most urgent local problems - hunger & plastic pollution. Jaffet, a Nicaraguan employee at Khalil’s accommodation, believed in the concept and organised the first event with him in the village of La Virgen Morena. The two men were overwhelmed when more than 180 people turned up and quickly realised that they could have an effective impact in the village. At the first event, around 2,000 plastic bottles were collected from the environment, people were provided with food, 12 jobs were created and young and old were made aware of the plastic cycle. Since then, the organisation has initiated events with the locals, where the population can buy a hot meal with a small number of collected plastic bottles. The material collected in this way is recycled or reused in different ways: for example, the plastic bottles collected in 2019 were used as building blocks to build a house. This has since served as a home for a single mother and her four children. During the pandemic years 20202021, the concept was slightly modified to minimise the risk of infection. Instead of hot meals, basic foodstuffs were brought to the families’ homes, which were sufficient for a family of five for about two weeks. The local population paid with 15 plastic bottles. Since the Corona situation has calmed down on the ground, monthly awareness-raising events can now be held again in the three target communities. Since January 2022, the local team has been processing the collected plastic into flakes in its own factory in El Astillero, Nicaragua. The organisation’s own first product is a surf comb that can be used to roughen the wax on the surfboard. Ten caps go into the production of one surf comb. The PET bottle flakes are still being collected until a suitable partnership/customer has been found. In the long term, this manufacturing facility should be able to finance itself and no longer be dependent on donations. Expansion to India and Ghana In the meantime, the project has been expanded so that people in the slums of Bhandup, Mumbai and Elmina, Ghana also benefit from the idea. India already has an intact waste disposal and recycling infrastructure. But the slum dwellers of Bhandup have hardly any access to it and the plastic waste is piling up. The ‘Buy Food with Plastic’ initiative takes care of the transport of the collected plastic bottles to their local recycling partners like Bisleri and Recircle and aims to produce its own products in the future. In Ghana, sachets are accepted as well as bottles, as they are very common in the region. Since there is an active community that cares about the sachet problem, partnerships have been established with local recycling companies like Coliba, to whom the material is handed over. ‘Buy Food with Plastic’ relies on donations and membership fees to carry out the following projects: Professionalisation of ‘Buy Food with Plastic’ in Ghana & India Building a recycling factory in Popoyo, Nicaragua Organising pilot events in further countries www.buyfoodwithplastic.org Food service in exchange for collected PET bottles in Ghana
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTY0MjI=