The Horse 2019/20

Source of income: - with commercials
                           - with sponsors
                           - Freemium

Output source:     - supply control
                           - app developer

Here an example:

step 1: You are in a language exchange in London and you have to print something for your school project
step 2: You open the app SHARE-it on your mobile phone
step 3: You are searching for a printer close to you
step 4: You select the printer you want to use
step 5: You go to the lender's house with your stick and print there your stuff for free
step 6: After you have done this you give the lender feedback about your experience on this app

In addition: If you lend for example a broom (Besen) you have to give the lender a deposit. When you bring the item back after you used it then you will get your deposit back.

Lars & Dharany

Food waste

In recent years there has been a lot of discussion in politic and media about food waste. Some countries have made laws to reduce food-waste. In France supermarkets aren’t allowed to waste food. They have to give it for free to homeless people before they waste the food. Germany has similar laws for food waste like France. Here in Switzerland we don’t have any laws for food waste in supermarkets. They are allowed to throw away what they want.

In Switzerland supermarkets are responsible for only 5 % of the all the food that gets wasted. Around 50 % of the food gets wasted at home. But the food that is wasted from supermarkets is most of the times good food, while private households waste the food when it’s not eatable anymore. So the food that is wasted in supermarkets gets wasted for no reason in most cases.

Interviews

We have made interviews with a owner of a little farmshop:

How much food do you waste?

Nearly nothing. Only products like eggs or milk are very tricky to store.

Which food get wasted the most by you?

Eggs, because they are the trickiest products and get bad very fast.

Why do you throw away the food?

Because otherwise you can get a food poisoning. This would be bad for our reputation and we can get sued.

Have you done arrangements against the food waste?

No, we dont do anything, because the demand is not planable. We look that we waste as less food as possible.

Would you eat food which is older then the “best before date”?

Yes, nearly in every case. In milk and meatproducts we look very carefully. Naturally we cant sell food which is over the best-before date, because it is not alloud.

Have you a bad conscience when you throw away good food?

No, because we only waste food which you cant consume anymore.

Do you attach importance to the spotlessness of an apple for example?

No, I dont tend to, because external flaw does not mean that the food is not good anymore.

If you have the choose between an older product and a fresh one which would you take? Both are eatable?

I would tend to fresh food, but I would never waste food, which is over the best-before date but edible. 

Do you have a solution against the food waste in supermarkets here in Switzerland and as well in other countries?

You can give the food for example to poor people.

Solutions for the food waste in supermarkets

There are many solutions for the problem. Supermarkets can give away the food which is over the best before date for free. This is also a possibility for poor citizens to spend less money. In this less food gets wasted and you help poor people. But there is also a downside with this method. If the supermarkets are forced to give the bad food away for free, nobody would buy any food, but wait until the food is over the best-before date and would get it for free then. We think this cant be the solution.

Another solution would be, that they have to give the bad food to welfare recipients for free. We think this would be a great idea, because the supermarkets can sell their food for the normal price in most of the times, but less food gets wasted. Also only poor people get the food for free.

Added comment from the writers:

Food waste has a huge effect on climate change. Food waste is responsible for 8 % of the Co2 balance sheet. In Switzerland supermarkets are responsible for 5 % of the food waste. So supermarkets are responsible for 0.4 % of the balance sheet. So the food waste in supermarkets is only a small problem in terms of climate change. The most food gets wasted at home. So we are responsible to reduce our food waste and make a little step into a sustainable world.

Today we put all the researches and interviews together to one text. Now we're almost ready to publish our post. But before this step, we want to shape the post by correcting some grammar mistakes and by forming the sentences correctly. To shape it, we wrote an introduction at the beginning of our post.

We're very happy to see how our post is getting created step by step and how far we are now. Now we're getting closer to the end of our project.

Best regards,

Deniz and Maria

Summary Evaluation of the survey on the life cycle of a local product

Costumers are the important people for farmers as they buy their products, that is also why  it was important to obtain not only information from experts, but also opinions and views of the population on the subject "Growth of a local product". For this reason, we started a survey in which we wanted to find out the apple varieties known to the population and additional questions about the cultivation and process of production.

More...

Hello everyone

In this lesson we transfered our text for the post from german to english. We asked Elizabeth from India how far she have been coming with her part of the Project and she wrote, that she will finish it soon.

Our text is now ready to publish, we only need some pictures and the part from Elizabeth of course.

Unfortunately we coudn't visit a chocolate factory but we found lots of interessting facts in the internet which we could use.

Best regards,

Shana & Rahel

Here is our text for the post:

More...

In addition to the development of an apple, our project also aims to analyse the effects of apple production on the climate. For the necessary information we have contacted the agricultural school Strickhof in Lindau and have done research on the internet to supplement this.

Apple production has both positive and negative effects on the climate. Every production process has a negative impact on the climate, including the use of machinery, pesticides etc. in apple production. But with apple production a new plant grows, which takes the CO2 out of the atmosphere and produces oxygen from it. The change in the climate in apple production is mainly noticeable in the fact that weather extremes such as frost, hail etc. are increasing. Due to climate change, new investments had to be made in the area of weather protection for apple trees. Many plantations have to be irrigated (bewässert) by longer periods of drought. However, climate change is making it possible to grow thermophilic crops such as apricot trees in regions where this was previously not possible. The ecological footprint of an apple depends on the variety. Depending on how long an apple can be kept and which measures are taken to extend its shelf life (Haltbarkeit), more or less greenhouse gases are released. If a lot of effort is put into the shelf life (Haltbarkeit) of an apple, it is quite possible that an apple imported by ship from abroad will emit fewer greenhouse gases. In today's society, we want to have apples and other fruits on offer at any time. This also applies even if it is not in season. In order not to interrupt the supply of apples, we have to store and import apples. For a better ecological footprint, the supply of apples should be limited to the apple season in Switzerland. The production of apples is highly professional. Companies produce apples that meet the requirements of the trade and consumers. Changes would only be possible if the demands of the trade and consumers changed.

Stefanie Kunz, Simone Etter, Tamara Keller, TZ19, Wetzikon

Since we already promoted our idea with a small film at the beginning of the school project, we wanted to work with films in the main project as well. In a simple learning video we wanted to explain in a simple way what the challenges in shipping are.

The first thing we thought about was, which 3 challenges come first. So it was possible for us to split up and collect each of us on the various challenges on the Internet. After the text was written, we created the appropriate videos.

On the Internet, we searched for suitable programs in the field of animated films that can be used free of charge. We chose the "Animaker" website. First we had to get to know the program and understand how to use it. Since not all applications within the program are free, we had to be creative. The time per film was also limited to 2 minutes. So we had to limit ourselves in terms of content and bring only the most important facts.

So that the educational films had an appealing background music, we searched the internet for music that could be used free of charge. We were able to find the right pieces of music on Bensound and mentioned the source accordingly in the films.

We wanted to reproduce the interviews as we had conducted them with the two companies. We therefore decided to make the interviews available in PDF form in English and German at the end of the article.

Team Transportation, Wetzikon, Switzerland

Matthias and Jeannine, BM2 TZ19

Hi everyone

We prepared our text for the post on dontwastemy.energie. For now it is in german but we will translate it to english for the post.

Best regards,

Shana & Rahel

More...

Because of our project work in economy we hadn't enough time to work on our project "Food wasting at weddings". Therefore we will take some time in Christmas holidays to work for this project. After the Christmas holidays we will publish our results. 

Thank you for your attention.

Best wishes,

Selina and Julia

Hello together

Attached you can find our introduction for our article.

Best regards

Anja & Nathan

In recent years there has been a lot of discussion in politic and media about food waste. Some countries have made laws to reduce food-waste. In France supermarkets aren’t allowed waste food. They have to give it for free to homeless people before they waste the food. In Germany they have similar laws for food waste like France. In Switzerland we don’t have any laws for food waste in supermarkets. Here they are allowed to throw away what they want.

Our experience

To sum up water in agriculture is a very big problem. Most of the water in the world is not consumed in the home. Agriculture uses about 70 percent of the water. This fact is extremely fascinating. Our opinion after this foundings from the interviews has changed. We have to save water. It is a scarce good and we have to pay attention to the usage.

In the beginning we thought that the watering on farms is not that common. We also imagined that in probably every country they have no problems with water except of the continent of Africa. If we think how water will be used in 100 years in the agriculture, we don‘t think very positiv. Because of the climat change the farmers need to water their plantage more often than today. It will not rain as often and if it rains the rainfall is much weaker. The farmers have confirmed our suspicion of water scarcity in the future with the survey.

Because of all these discoveries, we decided to create an Instagram account on which we want to share how important it is to take care of our water. So, if you are interested in the topic of the water supplying in agriculture follow us on Instagram the_use_of_water

As we have already mentioned, we had the opportunity to cooperate with India. Except for a few misunderstandings, our communication was excellent. Once our collaboration was established, we opened a group chat on WhatsApp. We exchanged ideas, shared our progress and sent each other pictures. Video chats were also a very helpful option. We made good progress and all members tried to complete the tasks on time. Of course there were also some technical problems. The Internet caused us difficulties in chatting again and again. Also the time difference was noticeable here and there. But all in all it was a very positive experience.