What if your weekly veggies came with a sense of purpose?

Across Switzerland, hundreds of people are rediscovering what it means to grow fresh produce, together.

They plant, harvest, and share locally grown food straight from the soil, rebuilding not only local food systems but also a sense of community.

This growing movement is called community-supported agriculture (CSA) or, in German, Solidarische Landwirtschaft (SOLAWI) or Regionale Vertragslandwirtschaft (RVL).

It’s a partnership between farmers and consumers based on solidarity, transparency, and care for the land.

For decades, the global food system has focused on producing more — more yield, more calories, more profit.

The so-called Green Revolution brought industrial fertilizers, pesticides, and high-yield crops that fed millions. But the price has been steep.

Industrial agriculture has accelerated land degradation by exhausting soils through intensive monocultures, heavy tilling, and excessive chemical inputs. Over time, this combination strips the soil of nutrients, disrupts its natural structure, and increases erosion, leaving once-fertile land depleted and far less resilient (UNEP).

This degradation also drives a steep decline in biodiversity. Today, just three crops — rice, maize, and wheat — provide 60% of global calories, crowding out thousands of native plant species and the diverse insects, birds, and microorganisms that depend on them. In addition, fertilizer runoff pollutes rivers and oceans. Agriculture now accounts for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and uses half of the world’s habitable land. 

This system doesn’t just harm nature; it harms people.Industrial farming exposes workers and wildlife to toxins, drives deforestation, and fuels antibiotic resistance. Farmers often struggle to survive despite producing record harvests. Food has become a cheap commodity —abundant yet disconnected from its true cost.

In short: our food system feeds the world, but it doesn’t nourish it.

Community-supported agriculture flips this logic.

Instead of distant supply chains and faceless markets, CSA builds direct partnerships between farmers and consumers so that the latter can easily have access to locally grown food. Moreover, they apply regenerative farming practices that protects the soil and the land’s biodiversity.

Members contribute a fixed amount at the start of the season, sharing the farm’s risks and rewards. They receive a regular share of fresh, seasonal produce — often harvested that very morning. Many also join in for planting days, harvest festivals, or volunteer shifts.

It’s locally grown food for people, not markets — a system rooted in fairness, trust, and transparency.

Farmers gain financial security and freedom to focus on soil health, biodiversity, and ethical practices rather than market pressures. Consumers gain more than vegetables — they gain a relationship with the people and places that feed them.

CSA brings sustainability down to earth — literally.

By embracing organic or regenerative methods, cutting food miles and eliminating packaging, these farms restore soil life, reduce emissions, and support pollinators and local ecosystems.

For participants, it’s also a way to reconnect with nature in everyday life. For those cooperatives that invite members to be hands-on, working outdoors reduces stress, improves physical and mental health, and rebuilds appreciation for seasonal rhythms.

It turns food from a transaction into an experience. One that nurtures community and wellbeing.

CSA also reshapes local economies. Instead of competing on volatile markets, farmers and consumers co-create transparent, local food cycles. That’s resilience — not just for farms, but for whole communities.

The first SOLAWI farms appeared in Switzerland in the late 1970s, inspired by models from Japan and the U.S. After a quiet start, the movement is blossoming again — today, around 40 initiatives are active across the country.

Here are a few examples:

• Pura Verdura (Zurich): More than a veggie subscription — members help harvest, transport, and plan crops, becoming part of the farm’s rhythm.
• Solawi Halde (Altendorf, Zurich): A biocyclic-vegan farm — no tractors, no animal manure, just soil regeneration and low-impact innovation.
• meh als gmües (Zurich): A cooperative where members contribute about 20 hours of work each season and share weekly harvests.

Herbstzeitlosen (Obermettlen, Bern): A SOLAWI model for ethical livestock farming that deepens ties between producers and community.

Each project looks different — but they share one principle: when people reconnect with the land, locally grown food becomes a force for regeneration.

Feeling inspired to get your hands in the soil? Here are a few ways to start:

🌱 Join or support a local SOLAWI or a community garden
Find a nearby initiative and sign up as a member. Or  volunteer for a planting day. Also quite often, municipalities run their own gardening projects. Ask your council about community gardens in your area.

If you are in Davos, get in touch with us! We run a number of related initiatives such as: 

• A bio-vegetable garden and courses
• A compost and organic waste project
• Workshops as part of the Davos Tourism programme that include foraging, fermentation and other activities
• A mini-Alpine garden at the Kirchner Museum

You can find more information here.

Pick your own produce
Try one of Switzerland’s “self-pick” farms to reconnect with food production firsthand:

• freizeit.ch – Beeren & Gemüse selber pflücken

• selberpfluecken.ch

Buy local
Support farm shops and veggie-box subscriptions such as:

• Solawi Halde – Zurich, Wädenswil, Rapperswil, Glarus

• Uglyfruits  – nationwide organic fruit & veg delivery

• Biogmües-Abo – Bern, Solothurn, Murten

• Bio Bouquet – Zürich, Basel, Bern, Solothurn

Start small
Grow herbs or tomatoes on your balcony — even tiny patches reconnect us with cycles of care and patience.

Community-supported agriculture reminds us that food can be more than a product — it can be a relationship.

Every shared harvest builds trust, resilience, and belonging.

When we grow food locally together, we grow something far greater: a culture of care — for ourselves, each other, and the planet.

Tsüri.ch made November its circularity month, partnering with Greenbuzz and One Planet Lab Switzerland for their event Product longevity & repairability in Switzerland and beyond, and Repair Thursday is at the door! 

While Switzerland is quite advanced when it comes to recycling, repairability and avoidance of waste are also gaining momentum. In 2022 already, 14 organisations from all parts of Switzerland have formed the Long live our products coalition to support the transition to a true circular economy in Switzerland. The coalition wants to support the creation of a framework at federal level and encourage economic actors to further develop their offer in extending the lifespan of consumer goods. 

According to the OECD indicator on municipal waste (waste collected and treated by or for municipalities, included waste from households, commerce and trade, office buildings, businesses, yard and garden waste, street sweepings, litter containers and market cleansing), people in Switzerland generated 700 kgs of waste per person in 2021,  a trend that had been increasing since 1990. In particular, an average of over 23 kilos of electronic waste is disposed of per capita every year in Switzerland. Some electronic devices are indeed difficult to recycle because of their complexity and the variety of materials they contain. According to Joelle Herrin from Greenpeace and the Long live our product coalition, if we were to recondition mobile phones instead of producing new ones, we would use 80% less resources while also avoiding 4 to 5 times the CO2 emissions usually emitted.

With Repair Thursday on November 28th, the Zuerich repair association decided to make our life easier so we could repair objects instead of throwing them away. Repair Thursday sees workshops, repair businesses and dedicated craftspeople open their doors throughout Zurich. Driving force behind the working group for the creation of a repair and upcycling centre in the city of Zurich, the association offers an online platform mapping existing repair businesses (including the repair cafés that we already know!) and partner with Entsorgung und Recycling Zürich (ERZ), offering repair advice as part of the Mobile Recycling Centre pilot project.

As the association joyfully says, “Repair Thursday – an opportunity to finally get those repairs you keep putting off done – because throwing things away is not an option!” Be part of the movement!

We live in a connected, consumer-driven, capitalist world. Ultimately, we are all consumers, but we have a choice about what kind of consumer we want to be. We have a choice about what we buy and how well we take care of our possessions or how quickly we dispose of them. The things we buy have the potential to harm the environment, both during production and in transit and disposal.

You have the choice to become an environmentally conscious consumer. It’s in our hands what kind of consumer we want to be. Environmentally conscious consumers think about the environmental impact of their purchases and whether they need to buy anything at all.

“If it can’t be reduced, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refurbished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be curtailed, redesigned or taken out of production. – Peter Seeger

You’ve probably heard of the 5Rs: discard, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot. By now, they’ve become the 7Rs! If you work through them all, you’re well on your way to living a life of minimal impact. Some things may still end up in the trash, but if that’s unavoidable, do it responsibly and recycle or compost what you can.

1. RETHINK: Sit back and think about what kind of consumer you want to be and what that means for the environment. Which companies are very active in green-washing their operations? Which companies put environmental protection ahead of their profits

2. REFUSE: Think before you buy, and be prepared not to buy at all. If you only use an item once in a while, can you borrow it from a neighbor, friend, or sharing platform? If you use it more often, can you buy it used on a secondhand platform like Ricardo.ch, Tutti.ch or Marketplace? Environmentally conscious consumers buy less and buy products that are least harmful to the environment, such as items that are already on the planet, and give them a second life.

3. REDUCE: Buy fewer, but high quality products that have little or no packaging and last a long time. Items you no longer need or rarely use can either be donated to those in need, sold, or made available to others on sharing platforms.

4. RE-USE: Upcycle something instead of throwing it away. Examples: Glass jars can be used to store dry goods, old calendar pages serve as homemade envelopes, old toothbrushes are used to clean hard-to-reach places, empty toothpaste tubes are used as funnels.

5. RE-GIFT: When you re-gift something, you are giving someone a gift that you received from someone else and probably didn’t need. Don’t feel guilty about re-gifting! It’s a good thing to pass the gift on to someone who will enjoy it more than you. You do have to follow this etiquette, though: The gift is brand new and in its original packaging. You’re sure the gift will please the recipient. However, don’t pass on handmade gifts that others have made for you.

6. RECYCLE: Put things back into the waste stream to be used for something else. Glass is used for road construction, plastic is melted down to make new products. Metal cans are reused to make new metal cans. Batteries and expired pharmaceutical products must be disposed of in appropriate recycling sites.

7. ROT: Compost your own organic waste or participate in an organic waste composting program. Organic waste that we compost is used to fertilize our gardens or fields or is converted into biogas.

For more inspiration and insight, check out our online Resources.

Did you ever wonder why it’s so hard for people to live happier with less? Last week we were at the 18th European Trend Day of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. The theme of all the lectures and presentations was about “frugal innovation”.

First, what Jason Hickel’s presented about degrowth was not new, but still the numbers are quite blunt when you see them, and gives us additional motivation to what we are doing. It’s really up to us – the rich countries – to change the way we live and work together. 

What fascinated me enormously was the talk by Leidy Klotz and the presentation of his research. He found out that it’s really hard for people to subtract things. That people tend to add things .. to their life, to their outfit, to their house, well to just about anything … in order to make things better. Hence the message that less is more, is not an easy one to convey, and not just because it has to do with “renouncing”, but apparently because it has been engraved in our DNA that more is better. Which makes our mission even more important, as well as working (with others) on solutions towards it.  

So what are solutions? Well, we still much believe that people are learning by doing, and therefore we want to create opportunities for people to obtain positive experiences in living a simpler life. 

In a weeks time our “GoSimple Challenge” Pilot will kick off in Basel, whereby households of all sorts will follow a 6-month programme. The challenge includes hand-on workshops and participants can support each other in taking on the various challenges to simplify their lives.

However there is of course much more that we can do and we are excited to collaborate with many other partners on achieving that. Stay tuned for our next blog post and some more inspiration when it comes to creative solutions!

To be continued … 

You still know us under the name “UP” or Umwelt Platform”? During the lengthy Corona period, we gave it some thought. We realised that the name no longer suits us. We are national, work in 4 languages, are dynamic, positive and want to keep it simple: From now on we are called GreenUp and appear stronger, greener and more connected! Since everything got a bit quieter and we were no longer allowed to organise events, you didn’t hear much about us. But with our new appearance we are changing that right now. 

The last few months we have been busy expanding our activities. We are very proud to be able to organise GreenUp events in Sion and Lugano, in addition to Basel, Zurich, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Solothurn, Locarno and Davos. Our community of over 50 volunteers is growing steadily. We strive every day to motivate as many people as possible to make their lives easier.

In addition to our popular event series, such as FoodbyFoot, Circular Safari or Disco Soup, we also have some bigger projects coming up. Browse through our website to find out more. As you may already know, we focus on the following six topics during our events and projects: 

– Zero Waste & Circular Economy

– Living, Building & Energy

– Local & Sharing Economy

– Mobility & Leisure

– Food 

– Urban Green

– Happy Frugality (generic)

Thanks to the clarity of our new website, you can now find our resources, tips and tricks for a simpler everyday life more quickly. Are you interested in volunteering and helping us achieve our goals together? Then sign up now as a volunteer in the city of your choice!