Madame Frigo against Food Waste

It's easily done: You get home with bags of shopping and realise that your refrigerator is already full! Madame Frigo and its public refrigerators is here to prevent you from having to toss your excess groceries in the trash!

It all began seven years ago in Berne, when a group of students set up the first public refrigerator. The concept solved one or two well-known problems in one fell swoop: What to do with the excess groceries you've bought or the supplies that need using up before your next vacation. The students declared war on food waste by establishing the refrigerators as a public platform for food exchange.

Around one third of all food in Switzerland is thrown away. The shocking and, for many, most surprising aspect of this food waste is that the majority of it hails from private households. Countless products are bought before ending up unopened in the trash, a habit that leads directly to the waste of valuable resources and to heavy pollution. The good news is that we can all make a difference by making small changes to our behaviour. Public refrigerators have been made available as a way of helping us do exactly this, and enabling left over food to be saved as part of our everyday lives.

How it works
The concept of the public refrigerators is simple: Put what you no longer need into it or take what you need or have perhaps forgotten from it. The refrigerators are accessible 24/7 and can be used free of charge by everyone. The refrigerators offer a practical solution to all of us as a means of minimising private food waste in Switzerland.

Madam Frigo has moved significantly closer to achieving this very goal in recent years. With 122 locations already spread across Switzerland, it has managed to make a substantial contribution to reducing domestic food waste. Last year, an estimated 175 tons of food were saved from the trash.

Huge demand, huge commitment
The bright yellow refrigerators arouse great interest among the general public. More than 450 volunteers put in many hours of unpaid work every day. These local helpers look after and check the refrigerators regularly and even organise collections from local stores and bakeries.

The sites are not only operated by volunteers, the majority are also initiated directly by them, which means they are always established where a demand for Madam Frigo exists. The sites are often not just places of food exchange, but also projects close to the hearts of the initiators, which means they are highly committed as a result.

Madame Frigo is not just an organisation that offers the public a way of reducing its personal food waste, but also sees itself as part of a wider international movement working towards sustainable development, which is why the organisation will be concentrating increasingly on raising awareness of the issue in the future. Household food waste in particular is the result in most cases of ignorance about storage and shelf life or a general lack of awareness about our food.

Work on expanding the refrigerator network will, of course, continue into the future. The refrigerators are and will remain the core element of Madame Frigo. However, in addition to offering a practical possibility to exchange food, its aim is also to contribute to a livelier community and present people with an opportunity to work together for a more sustainable world.

A huge thank you to Svenja Chollet and Madame Frigo!