Sustainability
Every year, the Swiss food industry alone produces an incredible 963,000 tons of food waste. A large part are so-called sidestreams, e.g. whey, which occurs during cheese production. Another large part are approx. 86,000 tons of high-quality raw materials that are disposed of, end up in animal feed or processed into biogas. This waste is not only tragic, but also a huge missed opportunity!
Some reasons for the occurrence of excess raw materials are:
- De-Listing of a product in the supermarket
- Contracts for too large quantities
- Seasonal sales fluctuations
- Inaccurate forecasts
Food manufacturers lack suitable solutions to resell these surplus raw materials. In addition, public pressure to reduce this food waste is increasing. The Swiss government, in cooperation with the food industry, has launched an action plan to reduce food waste, but there is a lack of suitable pragmatic solutions. Here our Rohstoffboerse.ch comes into play with our intelligent, scalable and fast solution!
As the first open B2B raw material exchange platform in Switzerland, we make it easy by collecting raw materials and passing them on to interested buyers, from canteens to private consumers. Our platform not only redistributes, but allows manufacturers to turn waste into measurable revenue and sustainable profits.
Where necessary, we fill in smaller quantity units so that they are suitable for B2C/retail sales.
Every kilo of food mediated in this way remains in the food cycle, protects the environment and helps us all to reduce our CO2 footprint.
From May 2024 to the end of 2025, the commodity exchange has brokered almost 22 tons of food. converted into CO2 equivalent, this is about 26 tons of CO2 saved (depending on the saved surpluses and the associated calculations).
So we were already able to contribute a small part, but we still have big challenges and also opportunities to bring these overstocks to the right place!
A CO2 calculator for food can be found here at GoClimate.