GENEVA: SWISS is collaborating with Too Good To Go, the food app that connects consumers with food that would otherwise be thrown away.

Founded in Copenhagen in 2015, the Certified B Corp says it has since saved 348 million pounds of food, the equivalent of 87 million meals, by partnering with restaurants, businesses, grocery stores and food banks in 15 countries.

SWISS is now offering unsold food items at the end of flights from Geneva this month in a bid reduce the amount of fresh food that goes to waste.

Passengers can choose a bag containing one, two or three fresh food items at one third of their usual price. The content is not revealed in advance.

“The first results from these trials have been promising,” noted Romain Vetter, SWISS’s head of Western Switzerland. “The new approach has been well received by our passengers on the flights concerned. We’re now awaiting a final analysis of the trials’ findings to decide if we should extend it to further routes.”

Too Good To Go estimates each meal redistributed or sold equals the carbon footprint of fully charging a Smartphone 422 times.

The organisation acknowledges it is difficult to calculate the carbon impact of food waste and relies on data from the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation: “Each year, we waste 1.3 gigatons of edible food and this releases 3.3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (without taking into account land use change). This means that one kilo of food waste equals 2.5 kilos of CO2 equivalent. [So] one ‘magic bag’ sold is counted as one meal saved - equal on average to one kilo of food and hence 2.5 kilo of CO2 saved.”

In the US, 40 percent of edible food is wasted - the equivalent of a full midsize SUV every second. Since launching in New York this year, the app is now supported in Boston, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland.

More information on how much, why and where food waste ends up: https://toogoodtogo.com/en-us/movement/knowledge/what-is-food-waste

A new report by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung and Friends of the Earth Europe says the livestock industry is responsible for up to 21 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

The two non-profit organisations note 20 livestock firms are responsible for more GHG emissions than Germany, Britain or France. Six of them with headquarters in the EU have not disclosed the total emissions from their supply chains.

Before the 1970s very little meat was traded internationally due to its perishability. This changed with technology advances that made frozen or refrigerated transport possible. Now meat production is forecast to increase 40 million tonnes by 2029, reaching 366 million tonnes annually.

Between 2015 and 2020, global meat and dairy companies received over US$478 billion in backing from 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds, most of them based in North America or Europe, according to the report.

“Industrial meat farming is fanning the flames of climate crisis and biodiversity collapse while threatening the health of farmers, workers and consumers – the evidence is resounding,” declared Friends of the Earth Food & Agriculture campaigner Stanka Becheva,

“The EU needs to curb this insatiable industry, but right now its leaders are just eating out of Big Agribusiness’ hand. Europe must act to clamp down on deforestation and human rights violations in supply chains, facilitate the switch to more plant-based diets, and redirect billions of euros of subsidies and finance to small sustainable farmers.”