2.8 million tonnes of food loss per year
Keystone-SDA
This corresponds to around 330 kilograms of avoidable food waste per person per year.
This is according to the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) with reference to a study by the Swiss federal institute of technology ETH Zurich. The waste can occur during cultivation, processing, sale and consumption.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
However, not all food is equally relevant for the climate. “The environmental impact of a tonne of food waste varies greatly depending on which products it is made up of and where in the value chain it occurs,” writes the FOEN.
According to the report, meat, coffee and cocoa beans have the greatest environmental impact in terms of food waste. Butter, eggs, cheese, fish, oils and products imported by plane also contribute significantly to Switzerland’s CO2 footprint. Unutilised fruit, vegetables and baked goods also play a role, as they are thrown away on a large scale.
To avoid food waste, WWF Switzerland recommends avoiding unnecessary purchases, utilising leftovers and storing food properly.
Adapted from German by DeepL/ac
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.
