Sow It Goes
Stories shape us. Conversations connect us. Ideas plant the seeds for change. That’s what Sow It Goes is all about. This conversational podcast explores the journeys of diverse individuals—from artists and scientists to entrepreneurs, athletes, and everyday people. The title plays on the idea that growth, much like life, isn’t always linear; it’s messy, unexpected, and full of twists. The podcast's tagline, "Great things grow from small beginnings," reflects the belief that every success, no matter how big, started from somewhere small, often unnoticed, or unplanned. Welcome to Sow It Goes!
Sow It Goes
Turning Plastic Waste into Opportunity: The 'Buy Food with Plastic' Story with Anna Gracia Herbst
When Anna Gracia Herbst first saw a video of people collecting plastic bottles in exchange for hot meals in Nicaragua, something fundamentally shifted for her. After years of feeling paralyzed by global problems displayed in media—wars, climate crisis, extreme poverty—she suddenly found a concrete way to contribute. "I was like, okay, this is something I can do," she recalls, marking the moment her life trajectory completely changed.
At just 25, Herbst left her stable marketing career to co-found Buy Food with Plastic with her former classmate who had witnessed twin crises in Nicaragua: devastating plastic pollution and families unable to feed their children amid 80-90% unemployment rates. Rather than creating dependency through handouts, they developed community events where residents could exchange plastic waste for nutritious meals—addressing two critical issues simultaneously.
What began as simple events has evolved into a comprehensive approach across three countries. Today, the organization maintains collection points throughout communities in Nicaragua, Ghana, and India, operates trucks that gather plastic from households, runs manufacturing facilities that upcycle materials into new products, and—perhaps most importantly—creates sustainable jobs that lift entire families from extreme poverty.
The human impact is profound. Herbst shares the story of Luis, a recycler who's worked with them for four years. His employment enabled his son Jenner to finally attend school (previously impossible due to the prohibitive $250 cost of mandatory new uniforms) and provided health insurance covering his entire family. "We are not changing the whole world, but we are changing the world for this person," Herbst reflects, highlighting how targeted intervention creates ripple effects through generations.
For those feeling overwhelmed by global challenges, Herbst offers the Hummingbird Story—a tale of a tiny bird fighting a forest fire one water drop at a time while larger animals stood by. When questioned about its seemingly futile efforts, the hummingbird replied: "This is my contribution." The message resonates deeply with Herbst's journey: meaningful change often begins with small actions that inspire others to join. What small step might you take today?
There were so many challenges all around the world, I felt really numb, like what could I do? I don't think anything would make a difference.
Speaker 2:Thanks to one social media video, your life changed Completely. I was like okay, this is something I can do. You were actually on the Forbes 30 under 30 list with Buy Food with Plastic.
Speaker 1:I always thought Forbes only nominates the billionaires of this world. Right Communication, either with really talking to people that live in extreme poverty and also telling their stories to other people can be such a powerful tool to really make a change. These kind of stories gives me goosebumps.
Speaker 2:Anna Grazia Herbst at just 25,. You walked away from a stable marketing job, not for another career, but for a radical vision a world without plastic pollution or hunger. What drove you to take that leap?
Speaker 1:That's a really good question.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, nicole.
Speaker 1:I would say seven years ago 2018, it was a time in my life where I just stopped my communication studies at the University of Zurich and I dealt a lot with media and how media works and what they communicate and stuff like this, right, and what I always felt by consuming the media social media, but also different medias it numbed me, actually, because there were so many challenges all around the world wars, climate crisis and different kind of things that I would like to tackle but I had no idea what I could do or how I could do it right and where to start, because all of these problems are so huge.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, that was a moment in my life where I felt really numb, like what could I do? I don't think anything would make a difference, right, and then a good friend of mine we went to primary school together, but our paths actually, yeah, were a little bit apart for for some years, um, but he came up with the idea of buy food with plastic, so tackling these two problems the plastic pollution and the extreme poverty with one concept, and when I heard about it and he told me more about it, I was super convinced, I was inspired, and it was for me the moment where I saw okay, this is something where I can participate now and take action. So this is actually what, yeah, inspired me to do it.
Speaker 2:So you joined, buy Food with Plastic together with your former classmate, and what was the idea behind it or what moved you to actually join this project?
Speaker 1:So exactly, my former classmate, khalil Radi. He was in Nicaragua, actually privately, so he was just there to serve every day for three months. It was his big dream that he wanted to pursue for a long time, so he did it and when he was there he just really saw the problem of plastic pollution everywhere. Not only plastic, actually, but pollution in general. There was waste everywhere, um, and the problem was really that there are almost no bins around, right. So people, what they do is they burn their waste that they have in front of their houses or they dig holes and put the waste there because no one comes and picks it up. Right, and yeah, when he talked with the, with the people, he, okay, this is a problem because sometimes even mothers would cook on the fire. That they did with the waste, right?
Speaker 2:Which is super dangerous. Super toxic?
Speaker 1:Yes, and so he realized, okay, we have to do something here. But then at the same time, when he was there, a political crisis broke out in Nicaragua, which led to the fact that no tourists came into the country anymore almost no tourists. So a lot of people lost their jobs. Unemployment rate went from already 60% in this region to 80, 90, 100%. Like almost everyone lost their job, and this made it hard for the parents to buy food for their children. So this was actually the problem that was the most important for the people. Right, it was not the plastic laying around, it was more like what should I eat tomorrow? What should I give my kids to eat? So when he realized this, he thought, ok, the hunger problem comes before the plastic problem, but the people don't have any money at the moment. So what could they do? Or what could we do for them to get some food?
Speaker 1:And like, really from the beginning on, his ideology was not to give something away for free, because that's just not the reality of life and also you create more dependencies if you just give something for free and people would just maybe wait for the next food truck to come and give money to them. So the idea kind of came up in his mind that you could combine these two problems with each other. So the people had a lot of time. They had two hands, two feet, eyes, so they could collect the plastic either from the streets, from the beaches or from their households from plastic they consume themselves, bring it to a buy food with plastic event. So it's really like you can imagine it like a little party, like a community event where there's good music, good food and people come together, they enjoy their time and instead of paying for the food, the hot meals, with money, they pay with 20 plastic bottles.
Speaker 1:And Khalil did a video where he explained what he's doing because some of his friends and family, they donated a small amount of money, so this could even be like this could happen, and he wanted to be transparent from the beginning, so he did a video. This is what we did 180 people showed up. Like it was a huge success. And I saw this video on Instagram and I contacted him right away. And, yeah, as I told you, like I was in this moment where I felt like I want to do something but I didn't know how and where and what I could do, and this was it Like I was like OK, this is something I can do. And I contacted him right away and said I'm in.
Speaker 2:So 2018, the first event takes place in Nicaragua. It's a success and thanks to one social media video, your life changed Completely. Yes, completely changed, changed. So what are you doing today with?
Speaker 1:buy food with plastic so the community events are still our heart or our core project that we do, um, and it really is, yeah, very important to us that we still conduct these events, because it just brings the community together and it has such a good impact on the yeah, on the communities and the people that live in Nicaragua.
Speaker 1:But in the meanwhile, we also expanded to Ghana and India, actually also because of this video, because Shakti Yadav, a resident from the slums in Mumbai he saw the video the same time, actually, that I saw it, so it was really right after the first event took place in 2018. And he contacted us through Instagram and said we have the same problems here Extreme poverty, unemployment rate is super high, the people don't know what they should eat tomorrow, how they can give food to their children and we need buy food with plastic here. So we couldn't act on it right away because we didn't have the resources and the know-how then to expand to India right away. But Shakti Yadav he was very persistent over two years and contacted us, yeah, over and over again. And then in 2020, we also started our pilot project in India and we're still active in India until now, and Shaktiadav is our country manager for India.
Speaker 2:So what is a country manager? What does a country manager do, exactly?
Speaker 1:So, he oversees all the operations that we do. So this is not only the community. Events like this is how we started and we still do it. But now we really built a recycling infrastructure in every country that we're in. So Nicaragua, india, and a similar story to the story with Shakti happened in Ghana with George Kwame Kwanzaa, and we built recycling infrastructure with collection points, and also we have vehicles that can collect the plastic. And then also we upcycle the plastic on site, locally, with our local teams, to new products, the plastic on site, locally, with our local teams, to new products.
Speaker 1:So, just shortly, what does upcycling mean instead of recycling? So recycling would be if you make from one plastic bottle, you recycle it to another plastic bottle, so it stays the same, it has the same value, same product, than before. Upcycling is when you add value to it. So, for example, a plastic lid becomes an iphone case, so you have a product that has more value than it has had before. And then there's also downcycling, where you um, where you actually don't make it circular, but you give a material only one more step, like you use it one more time, but then it can't be recycled over and over again. It stops there. So this is actually really bad, because it's no circular economy behind it. It's really it stops there, and what you actually do is you move the problem to the next generation, because then they have to deal with the material and can't recycle it, and that's the opposite of what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but what makes me really sad is that I see it all over. So you see a lot of products that are downcycled and I think people are not aware of it. For example, all these shoes or jackets or bags that are made out of plastic bottles.
Speaker 1:And for a marketing perspective, it's really cool, right, and I bought it in the beginning because I thought, oh, this is amazing. You give the plastic bottle another life. But what the reality is is when you mix plastic bottles with other materials and you have to mix it with other materials that it can become a shoe or a bag or a jacket, right. Then you make it almost impossible to recycle it in the future because the materials are so intertwined or mixed with each other.
Speaker 2:That's such a good point, because I actually wasn't aware of that. You often see, oh, this shirt made from recycled materials and I think, great, they're doing something good, but actually it's not that great.
Speaker 1:So it always depends. When you have material that stays the same for example recycled cotton right, and it was cotton before and now it's also 100 recycled cotton then it's fine because you can recycle it again. But when you mix it recycled cotton with plastic bottles, with whatever I don't know then it's hard to recycle Because right now we don't have any machines to separate these materials.
Speaker 2:Do you have a piece of advice for our listeners on how to spot products that have been downcycled rather than upcycled, Because I find this quite hard. You know you trust the marketing when you go shopping. You think something is green, yeah.
Speaker 1:What is your advice on this? So what I learned is that a product is most sustainable when it's in monomaterial, so when it's just one material, because then it can be recycled over and over, and over and over again learned something.
Speaker 2:So you with buy food with plastic, you get people to bring the plastic to your sites and then you upcycle it. How do you upcycle it? What kind of products?
Speaker 1:do you create? So, first of all, the communities don't bring it to us. It's more, we come to the communities and create an event in their community. And this is very important for us, because it's not that we hire waste pickers, you could say, and then they collect plastic somewhere and then they bring it to us and we pay them in meals. It's more.
Speaker 1:Really, what our approach is is that the community is involved in this whole process. So it's really, it starts there. So the plastic doesn't even land in nature anymore. In the beginning, of course, when we started Buy Food with Plastic, people brought plastic mostly from the streets, because why would they collect it at their households before right? So they collected it from the beaches and the streets and you could also see it because the plastic bottles were very dirty. And now 50% of the plastic bottles come from the households. So it doesn't even land in the nature anymore. They keep it by themselves and then they bring it to a community event that we create, or they bring it to our collection points and that are in their communities or their schools, and this is really the the difference. You know that it doesn't even land there anymore.
Speaker 2:So I'm assuming you educate the people on what it means to recycle and upcycle plastic rather than burning it.
Speaker 1:Yes, so we do education workshops at every community event that we do, and this is very important for us and we think, really, education is the key right for change. But what we also had to realize is, yes, education is super important, but when you don't have the infrastructure to then be active in this, what you learned, it doesn't make any sense, right? So when you have a PhD in how to recycle plastic, but there are no bins around and no recycling infrastructure, it doesn't mean a lot, right? So we do both we really educate the people at workshops and then also we build the infrastructure that they can use. So it's, first of all, collection bins where people can really throw away their plastic waste, and we collect the plastic every week.
Speaker 1:Then we have the truck going from household to household and collecting plastic from the people, and what we actually do is so we wanted to bring Buy Food with Plastic on wheels because we realized so many more communities want to participate in our activities.
Speaker 1:Right, but we don't have the resources to go to every community in the area. So what we thought is, when we have a truck, we could go from one community to another community, from household to household, and just give the people food in exchange for plastic bottles. But when we wanted to execute it, we realized it's very hard logistically to have meals on the truck with the heat. You work with plastic waste but also with food, so it's also not very hygienic. It takes a lot of time also to make the exchange on the truck right. We would need probably three to four to five people on the truck, so it's not really efficient. And what we also realized then in the end, why we couldn't do what we thought, is because the government actually doesn't allow us in Nicaragua to give out meal in such a large scale, because they do it when they want votes. Wow, I wasn't aware of that.
Speaker 1:Yes, so what? The government doesn't want us. They don't want us to have this power in the region, which we don't want. Right, we don't want power, we want to help the people. But we realize the government uses, yeah, the distribution of food for their power, um, so they don't allow it to other organizations to do it. So in the first place we thought, okay, this project can't be happening with the truck. Right, we can do the community events, but not the truck. But then we realized what would be possible is to give the people money instead of food, so they can buy food or other necessities they need with the money.
Speaker 1:So this is what we're also doing. We call it the truck project, where we have such a large impact. Right, because we can really reach the whole region, and we started it all in Nicaragua, but we will now roll it out in Ghana and India as well, because we completed the funding for trucks in Ghana and India as well, and India as well. And it's really nice because we realize, you know, people can bring the plastic and we heard they live with an average of 70 cents, for example, per day, and now we can sometimes even double their income per day just by selling plastic by them selling us the plastic. So this is the truck project that we do, which I would also put into the recycling infrastructure that we bring. Then we process the plastic in our recycling manufactories that we established. And the fourth core project would be the job creation part that I really want to highlight, because without jobs it's difficult to bring people out of extreme poverty and jobs is really like the key to bring also prosperity to these people and these communities.
Speaker 2:It's absolutely incredible what you've managed to achieve with your work. I'm just picturing myself at 25. The thought alone of taking a risk like this and and starting an organization, but also gaining all the knowledge that is required to be able to succeed, that's quite incredible. How did you even learn all these things that were required of you step by step?
Speaker 1:I think you know, when I was 25, I didn't know that all of this will come right. We started really small. We started with the community events, which is more like a birthday party to organize right, when people just come and have food. And then we professionalized from time to time, but we really just started so small. Of course it was a risk. I know what you mean, but I wasn't aware of everything that would come right and I think that was also.
Speaker 2:That was also good you already described the situation in Nicaragua. So people were unemployed, extremely poor, huge plastic pollution problem. Could you paint a general picture of what life is like in the communities you serve?
Speaker 1:For example, what we heard in Nicaragua. Just to give you a picture of how life looks like for them. In Nicaragua, people on average live with 75 cents per day per person. In Ghana it's 35 cents per day per person, and in India it's 50 cents per day per person. In Ghana is 35 cents per day per person, and in India it's 50 cents per day per person. So, yeah, it's, it's about to survive, right for them.
Speaker 1:In Nicaragua, we heard people say, especially parents.
Speaker 1:They said sometimes they have enough money maybe to buy their children some meals or some food, but then there's not enough for them, so what they do is they just drink three liters of pepsi just to get some calories, right.
Speaker 1:So what you see often, especially in nicaragua, is people that are overweight and then here from switzerland or from somewhere else. You would think is hunger really a problem there? But it's really like the wrong kind of way, how they, how they eat, like they eat, like they drink a lot of sugar, or sometimes what we heard is that, or what people told me, is they don't have fridges, so when they have food, they can't sustain it for long, right, so what they do is they eat everything right away because they don't know, maybe, you know, in a week they don't have any food anymore, so they eat everything in a few days and then there's a break where they maybe don't have any food. So it's crazy actually, and you wouldn't know if you wouldn't talk to the people, because you don't see it like everyone seems very happy and and fine, and yeah, you see them overweight and you think like it's, it's okay, they have enough food. But actually there's a huge problem there coming from switzerland.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the first time you were in contact with these people and how that affected you?
Speaker 1:so it actually started before buy food with plastic. Um, my parents, um, are also very socially engaged people, so I kind of grew up with it and I remember one time they took me to Cambodia when I was 14 years old. So we didn't do like normal vacation somewhere in a resort or so, but we really went to Cambodia. We went to hospitals there and to an orphanage and we also visited people at home that had some sicknesses. So really see what the reality was there.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, I was 14 years old and what I really realized in this moment it actually so the opposite, actually the opposite happened of what happened when I consumed so much media about the problems because it numbed me, right, but when I was there with the people, I could talk to them.
Speaker 1:I kind of felt like energized is maybe the wrong word because of course, it made me sad to see their, their sufferings, but at the same time I could feel we can do something, like talking to these people and realizing like what they care about, what is important to them, and then also coming back home telling my friends about what I saw and seeing, wow, they got inspired by, maybe we could help them, maybe we could do something together was so energizing that I saw, wow, communication either like with really talking to people that live in extreme poverty and also telling their stories to other people can be such a powerful tool to really make a change. So this is actually what I already realized when I was at this age. This is also why I studied communication at the University of Zurich, because I realized, wow, communication is a super powerful tool. And yeah, it's maybe different than what you think would happen, but I really felt, wow, there's something we can do. It's not I didn't feel numb or like, oh my God, I really felt we can's something we can do.
Speaker 2:It's it's not I didn't feel numb or like, oh my god, I really felt we can do something here when we consume media and the news it's just a bit overwhelming because it's so much information exactly, but when you're with the people who are affected it's easier, I guess, to also build a connection exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:I mean you can just ask them what they need and what is most important to them, and through the media sometimes it's so difficult to grasp With.
Speaker 2:Buy Food With Plastic. What has been the biggest challenge for you? Maybe emotionally, but also for the organization? I mean, on the surface, it seems like such a simple idea. Oh yeah, you get people to collect plastic and then you give them warm meals. But there's so much more going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:Yes, we do have a lot of challenges, that's true. What helps us a lot tackle these challenges is that we have local teams in all our target countries. In Nicaragua, ghana and India, we have our country managers who are born and raised there. They know exactly what the environment is about, what the community needs and stuff like this. This helps us a lot. And also we have legal partners in every country. So, for example, in Nicaragua, our country manager, frank, for example he himself is a lawyer and that helps a lot with all the legal stuff we need to do on site to make it even possible. And also in Ghana and India India we found trusted partners that we can work with and that makes everything like easier. That doesn't mean it's super easy peasy, but it makes it easier, you know, and also that, yeah, our country managers and our local teams can handle challenges on site.
Speaker 1:What is also strong, um a challenge since the beginning is, of course, also the funding right. It's not that it just comes like this um, we need money to to make it happen. And all, like the whole team in switzerland, we are all we were all new to this. We are five co-founders and we never worked in fundraising for a charity. We had sales experience or like a business background, but we never did fundraising for a charity, so we had to learn this right, and this was also challenging.
Speaker 2:This is just making me think about. You know, getting home in the evening after work I open my mailbox and almost on a daily basis I have flyers or people soliciting donations for different organizations, different initiatives, and it can be quite overwhelming to know who to support, because ideally you would want to help everyone, right? What do you think are some doubts people might have about supporting an organization like yours?
Speaker 1:So what I realized is that a lot of people think, or society thinks, the most important KPI in an NGO is what kind of money in the end reaches the beneficiaries.
Speaker 1:And I understand that because I was like that before. So this was always the question I asked myself when I saw a charity how much of the money that I donate will reach the beneficiaries. And if it's just I don't know how many percent, I would say maybe it's not a good charity and it's almost the only KPI that society looks at, at charities. And now, being on the other side side, I realized that it is an important KPI but it's not the most important because, like, maybe if we just play this through quickly, if you would donate 100 Swiss francs, right, and you would want something to happen in Nicaragua, so you would give me 100 Swiss francs and I would just put it in an envelope and send it to Nicaragua. So you would give me 100 Swiss francs and I would just put it in an envelope and send it to Nicaragua, that would already cost me for the shipping, right. So it's even impossible to get 100 Swiss francs to Nicaragua.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But then also, if I just give it to a random person there because I don't have any money to find out who is really in need, how could I help this person? What could I do? If I would just give this 98 Swiss francs, after shipping to the person, what would happen?
Speaker 2:Well, I've read that some people don't even have bank accounts there, so exactly, what happens with that money? It's a good question. I don't know. I don't even have bank accounts there, so exactly what happens with that money?
Speaker 1:it's a good question. I don't know, I don't have the answer. Yes, so it's actually really difficult and and I mean you don't know for every person right, maybe you are lucky and you give it to a, to a mom or grandma that invest this money so well so the family can get out of poverty. I don don't know, it could be, but in most cases, nothing happens, like no sustainable change is happening when you just give hundreds of thanks to a person and say here, have fun with it, right, so it needs so much more than this. It needs know-how transfer, it needs infrastructure on site and so much more than that.
Speaker 1:And this is what a lot of people forget when they think about I want, if I donate 100 Swiss francs, I want this 100 Swiss francs to get there, you know, and know-how transfer, infrastructure. You almost can't measure it in money. So you need maybe teachers, maybe even Swiss teachers or teachers from there that teach people about the education, about plastic pollution or food or stuff like this, so that it can become sustainable, exactly so this is something that I had to learn. I didn't know that before. So, this is something that I had to learn. I didn't know that before. No-transcript. This is not what I mean by it, and I think this perception of society comes from these kind of situations that happened. Ask yourself, if your money that you bring brings impact on site, what happens with it. You know, and, yeah, this is what I really would like to tell, to tell the listeners and and and the people that that are, yeah, that want to donate or want to become active in it.
Speaker 2:Do you have a story of a particular person you met that represents why the work you do is so necessary?
Speaker 1:Yes, actually I do. So. Who comes first in my mind is actually our recycler in Nicaragua, luis, in my mind, is actually our recycler in Nicaragua, luis. So he works for us since almost four years, I think. And what surprised me a lot was in the beginning. You know, I thought or I realized creating job opportunities is crucial where we're at right, in the regions we're active in, because unemployment rate is so high and to really bring people out of extreme poverty is not the meals actually we give them for a day, it's really to give them job opportunities where they can have, you know, a salary and a good life, a better life. And in the beginning I just thought, okay, we would create jobs and people would be just happy to have their job and that's it. But what I realize now is that the people are really on fire about what we do and our work and that they can contribute to a better world in their country and that they can make their environment cleaner. And and you know how motivated they are, and louis is one example of that, and what is so beautiful is that this job opportunity for him has so many spillover effects, like now his child, jenner.
Speaker 1:He, um, I met him. He was six years old and when I first him, he couldn't go to school. And I asked him why? Because I know that schools in Nicaragua are for free, so why doesn't he go? And he said, yeah, it's for free, but you have to pay for the uniform and it has to be a new uniform, so you can't buy it secondhand or so it really has to be a new uniform and it costs around 250 US dollars. And I told you like people are living with 70 cents a day, right, so it's almost impossible for them to get this uniform, so he couldn't go because of that.
Speaker 1:And now that Luis is employed with us, when he was seven years old, we were there again in Nicaragua and we saw him on his first school day so he could go to school. Now, and also now that Luis has this insurance with us, when something happens to Jenner, he can go to the hospital and everything is for free for him. And this is just something that shows me, wow, we are not changing the whole world, but we are changing the world for this person, you know, and even his family. So this is, yeah, this is. These kind of stories gives me goosebumps.
Speaker 2:You said you're not changing the world, but already changing just one life in such a positive way. That's huge. It makes a difference. It's crazy to think that something as simple as a uniform could stop a child from going to school. Yeah, so you not only tackle the plastic issue, the hunger, you actually create jobs. Could you give an example of the types of jobs you create? Yes, sure.
Speaker 1:So to be active in Nicaragua, ghana and India, we need recyclers who process the plastic that we collect. We also need truck drivers who collect the plastic from everywhere and transport it from the community vans or our collection bins to our recycling manufacturing. We need country managers and project managers who really oversee the whole operations, and accountants on site, lawyers, as I said, that we work with together. And then we have cooks, so we always work with cooks in the community. So when we go, for example, in nicaragua, we go to el astillero, this one community where around 300 people usually come to our community events. We work with cooks from el astillero and um, yeah, this is really um important, really important also for us that there's this connection and yeah, have there ever been any challenges with cultural differences between you?
Speaker 2:know you're coming from Switzerland and then they're completely different mentalities. Have you noticed any differences?
Speaker 1:Yes, a lot. So of course, we are completely different and what we realize is I mean, nicaragua, ghana and India themselves are different, right, they have different, also religious backgrounds, but also cultural backgrounds but they, the three of them, are still more similar than us in Switzerland, like we're really the aliens in this whole universe. I would say we're really different and but. But I really see it as a big opportunity because we can learn so much from each other. And it's also we. I think we all know that it can be a challenge. We are all aware of this, but that's also why we try to take it with humor. You know as as much as possible and learn from it so much. And we are aware, um, that we have to explain things, maybe more. Not only we from switzerland, but also our country manager from nicaragua sometimes have to explain us things that he thought isn't that common sense, like why didn't you know that? And we're like, okay, we didn't know that it works like this.
Speaker 2:Have the people, the locals in Ghana, Nicaragua, India? Have they been very receptive to you going to them and educating them on these issues, or was that difficult to kind of communicate these topics to them?
Speaker 1:No, the education part is not that difficult because we also work with local teachers. Mostly the people know them already, so they have a connection with them and they also say things in their kind of way. You know, it's not like we come and say this is actually the right thing that you should do, why don't you do it? It's really more like workshops with local teachers together. Actually, even these teachers now came up to us, or already some years ago, and asked if they could include the material that we have in their classes in school. So we also do school workshops now, which is really nice. That's great, yes, and so they're actually very open for it. And also the children we see. They really want to learn so much, right? Yes, they want to learn more about this topic, so they're really open for it.
Speaker 1:What was more difficult actually in the beginning in india was that charity is a is a big thing there and you have a lot of projects that give away food for free. So in the beginning it was difficult for them to understand why should I give you something in return to get the food? Because you're a charity? We're in extreme poverty, Like they didn't understand it. And when we started the community events and also started with the workshops, explaining them why it's also good for them that they bring the plastic Because, for example, yeah, there's no more waste laying around. It's also better for their, for their day-to-day life. Yeah, right, they realize, wow, this is a really good thing. And now they're super motivated and they even bring more plastic that they need to. So they bring. In average, they bring more plastic than 20 plastic bottles for one meal, although they don't get more food for it how has buy food with plastic changed you as a person?
Speaker 1:that's a good question, um, I mean, of course, I learned so much right by by doing, by being in contact with, with all these countries and facing these challenges. It did a lot to me and I think I grew a lot as a person, but I would also say it didn't change me completely. I more feel like it really brought out the best in me and also the sides that I like about myself, that where I can help people and where I can really make a difference.
Speaker 2:You were actually on the Forbes 30 under 30 list with Buy Food with Plastic. What did that mean?
Speaker 1:to you. It meant so much. It was just this recognition from an organization like Forbes, because I always thought Forbes only nominates the billionaires of this world, Right. So I was really, really surprised when I saw the list and also, yeah, that they recognize social entrepreneurs like this. It means a lot to me, and to me and the whole team. I mean it was really a recognition of the whole team and the work that we've did for so long now.
Speaker 2:I really believe that great things always grow from small beginnings, and I really think Buy Food with Plastic is the perfect example for that. What would you tell people who don't know where to start? They maybe want to help in some way, but they're overwhelmed. Do you have a piece of advice for them?
Speaker 1:Do you know the hummingbird story? I do not, you do not know the hummingbird story.
Speaker 2:I do not know the hummingbird story Because I think this small story.
Speaker 1:This little story is perfect for the moment, right now, because you said it always begins with a small step, right? And the hummingbird story is my favorite story in the world and it's about in a jungle where a fire broke out. So all the animals that lived in the jungle had to flee and they were desperate, like they didn't know what to do because their home was breaking down and the fire destroyed everything. And then they all gathered alongside a small water station, like a pond, exactly. And then there was this small hummingbird taking one sip of water, flying back to the fire, dropping it there, and he went back and forth and back and forth, and back and forth and back and forth, one drop after the other, and the big animals like the giraffe, the elephant, the lion, you know, they said to him come on, hummingbird, what do you think you're doing? You're not stopping the fire like that, with one drop at a time, right?
Speaker 1:And the hummingbird said I know I can't stop the fire like this, but that's my contribution to it, and if we would all work together we could stop the fire. And then the giraffe comes with the long neck, and then the elephant comes and the lion that can run fast and together they can stop the fire. But it had to start with the hummingbird, right? So what I really want to tell the people is it doesn't matter how small you start, just start is. It doesn't matter how small you start, just start, and you may think it's not important or it's not making a difference, but maybe it just needs you to start with it so someone else sees it and gets inspired by it and then together you can do so much greater things.
Speaker 2:So it may sound simple, but just start, really start, small now I can say I know the hummingbird story and it's a really powerful message. Thank you for for sharing that perhaps you can just share how people can follow what you're doing with buy food with plastic, where they can find you, how, how they can support you.
Speaker 1:Of course. So we're actually very active on Instagram and LinkedIn. So you can either follow me on LinkedIn, on my personal account or the BuyFoodWithPlastic account on Instagram, because there we share so many stories, videos, pictures that you really see what happens with the donations also on site and what kind of impact can we have.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm really excited to keep following what you're doing. I have been for a while and I can say I'm just so inspired by your idea and the impact you're having on many people's lives. I would say a little bit like the hummingbird, but even more.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you so much.