While people are starving elsewhere, food gets tossed by the tonne in Switzerland. In observation of World Food Day, held every October 16, swissinfo.ch has been keeping an eye on the food thrown out in the in-house cafeteria.
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Thomas Kern was born in Switzerland in 1965. Trained as a photographer in Zürich, he started working as a photojournalist in 1989. He was a founder of the Swiss photographers agency Lookat Photos in 1990. Thomas Kern has won twice a World Press Award and has been awarded several Swiss national scholarships. His work has been widely exhibited and it is represented in various collections.
According to the Swiss association foodwaste.chExternal link, about a third of all food produced in Switzerland gets lost or wasted somewhere between the field and the plate. This adds up to about two million tonnes of foodstuffs per year.
Photographer Thomas Kern has been snapping pictures of the leftovers from the restaurant at the headquarters of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation in Bern. Bircher muesli, vegetables, rösti, meat – there’s usually a bit of everything. What happens to all this food?
It used to be quite simple; restaurant leftovers were fed to the pigs via the slop bucket. However, this practice was banned in Switzerland some years ago for fear of animal diseases. ZFV, the operator of the canteenExternal link at swissinfo.ch, collects the waste so that it can be converted into green electricity and biodiesel.
Concrete measures include using vegetable peelings or unsold bread to make bouillon or croutons, and offering small portions of the daily specials.
(Photos: Thomas Kern, text: Sibilla Bondolfi)
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