Despite years of awareness campaigns and a national project to reduce waste, large amounts of edible food go directly from Swiss kitchens to the trash. On a foggy Tuesday morning near Fribourg, cars pull into the local waste facility. Boots open. Bags thump onto the concrete. Residents sort quickly between cardboard, metal and glass, the visible end of the recycling system. What’s missing is the household waste, usually discarded closer to home. And what’s inside those bags isn’t clear from the outside. But federal researchers have an idea. Every ten years, federal authorities commission a study in which researchers open thousands of discarded rubbish bags across the country. They sort, weigh and classify the contents, down to individual food items. The data forms the basis of Switzerland’s Monitoring der Lebensmittelverluste report: a document of the nation’s food waste. While the latest survey from 2025 shows a drop in household waste, Switzerland’s numbers remain high, and the ...
