When food is produced but not consumed, this leads to unnecessary CO2-emissions, biodiversity loss and land and water consumption. 25 per cent of the environmental impact of our food system is due to food waste (i.e. avoidable food losses). This corresponds to about half the environmental impact of motorized private transport in Switzerland. With the action plan to reduce food waste, the Federal Council wants to halve avoidable food losses by 2030 compared to 2017. This is in line with Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Food waste and loss refer to all food intended for human consumption that is not consumed by humans.
Food waste is the term used to describe avoidable food loss. These are the edible portions of food that are produced for human consumption, but end up not being consumed by humans.
Unavoidable food losses are, for example, parts of food that are not edible or are considered inedible in our culture.
Around one third of all edible food is lost between the field and the plate.
Food losses can be measured either from a consumption perspective (losses generated by food consumption in Switzerland, including imports and the associated losses generated abroad, but excluding export-related losses), or from a disposal perspective (food losses disposed of in Switzerland, including export-associated losses, but not including import-associated losses generated abroad, since these are not disposed of in Switzerland).
The FOEN bases its data on the ZHAW interim report (Beretta et al., 2025) and its predecessor study by Beretta and Hellweg, published by ETH Zurich (2019). According to these studies, food consumption in Switzerland results in a loss of around 2.8 million tonnes of food each year. This loss is incurred both in Switzerland and abroad (consumer perspective). The total amount is equivalent to 310kg of avoidable food loss per person per year over the whole value chain.
From the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN of Switzerland https://www.bafu.admin.ch/en/food-waste
