Market Square

The palatial red building is Basel Town Hall. This is where the Basel Parliament and the Grand Council sit in session. There’s always a bustling market: ‘Märtplatz’. Every day – apart from Sunday.

Farmers and businesses from the region and the areas of Germany and France close to the border gather here to sell their fresh and seasonal products: vegetables, salads, fruit, berries, cheese, flowers and plenty more.

Bettina, do you eat a lot of fruit and vegetables? What are your favourites?

Of course I do. I love strawberries in summer, and of course apples, pears, plums and grapes. My favourites are the chestnuts in autumn.

Consciously buying regional and seasonal products makes a substantial contribution to climate protection. Vegetables and fruit sold outside of their natural seasons are frequently grown in greenhouses that require a lot of heating. Or they are transported halfway round the world on trucks, ships or in aircraft. Strawberries from Morocco, asparagus from Mexico, apples from Australia. And all of that produces a lot of greenhouse gases.

Thankfully, a new way of thinking is gradually emerging, among a lot of young people, too. Companies from Basel are discovering and providing healthy food prepared using regional and seasonal products. One example is the soup bar so’up not far from here at Fischmarkt, where soups prepared with fresh and, whenever possible, regional products are served every day. And it is very successful: you often have to wait in a long queue to get your soup.

 
Do you like eating meat?

 
Sure. I like mutton and lamb especially. And it tastes best if it comes from Farmer Fehr in Glarus. It means that I know the lambs I am eating. My cousin has an organic cattle farm, and the meat is delicious. How about you, Dani: what you think about meat?

 
I admit that I like eating meat. But it doesn’t have to be every day! And if I do treat myself to a piece of meat, I make sure it comes from the region and that the producers consider aspects of sustainability.

On average, people in Switzerland eat 54 kilograms of meat per person and year. Much of this meat is imported from abroad or comes from animals bred using fodder brought here from other countries. Thousands of tons of concentrated feedstuffs that we can’t produce in these quantities in Switzerland. A large proportion comes from Brazil, where rainforests are cleared to make way for industrial-scale farming. This causes serious social and ecological problems.

 
That’s awful! So what can we do?

 
Switzerland would be in a position to do without imports of feedstuffs and meat if the people here only ate half as much meat. And if everyone in Switzerland decided on just one meat-free day a week, Switzerland would reduce the annual emissions of CO2 by the same amount that Swiss road traffic produces in two months.

 
Incredible. And vegetarian food tastes great these days. Years ago, restaurants would only serve salads or a vegetable platter. But these days there are plenty of restaurants offering a daily menu of vegetarian dishes and many of them are really creative. Cooking and eating vegetarian food is in. Have you ever tried a veggie burger, maybe one from Captain Plant?

 
Captain Plant??? Er, I don’t think I’ve heard him.

 
Captain Plant is another innovative young company from Basel. The idea: delicious fast food and burgers without animal products. Captain Plant Food Trucks have done the rounds of markets, events and festivals throughout Switzerland since 2012. The company posts the next stops of the Food Truck on its website.

Did you know that approximately 30 per cent of all food is thrown away somewhere along the line between the producer and the consumer? Every third potato, every third fish and every third slice of bread.

Maybe the food is thrown away during harvest, perhaps in the shops or the restaurant. And even in our homes we throw away a lot of food. Simply because we have too much, because we are not aware or because we’ve bought too much. On average, people in Switzerland discard 320 grams of food every day – although its production and transport are often responsible for lots of CO2 emissions.

There’s plenty we can do if we behave responsibly as consumers: we can buy only the things we need, and as much as we need. And whenever possible it should be in season and from the region.