Melting Pot August Newsletter

Hello Melting Pot-ers, 

Welcome to the first edition of the Melting Pot newsletter! Officially launched at the start of summer at the Circular Economy Incubator pitch day, this newsletter will pop into your inbox once in a while with three main goals: (1) SAVE: what food saving events are happening in the coming weeks?, (2) EAT: here we will share an easy food saving recipe or hack that you can do with what you have (most likely) lying around the house, and (3) SHARE: food saving stories from our growing Melting Pot community!

SAVE

• Foodwaste.ch is organizing a few food save banquets in the surrounding area of Zürich (DE)

  • In Winterthur on the 21st of September

  • In Landquart on the 29th of November

• Edible City, a new permaculture initiative, is hosting several workshops:

  • 30th of August - creating your own skincare and snacks from the Hardtrum Permaculture Garden: details here (DE/EN)

  • 12th of September - preserving food and medicinal plants from a Zürich garden before the winter: details here (EN) 

  • 20th of September - edible city walk! Find out what you can snack on during your daily commute: details coming soon, follow Tania (DE/EN)

  • 27th of September - permaculture workshop including lunch and pesto-making: details here (DE/EN)

• Join one of the Zürich Net-Zero walks, which will feature information on food saving in Zürich (regular dates)! DE only for now, EN coming soon.

• Check out the Madame Frigo locations, there are 22 in Zürich and 170 all around Switzerland. Perhaps there is one near you?

EAT

Summer is coming to an end here in Switzerland, and you might already be mourning the amazing vegetables that the season brings. If you have some surplus veggies that you can’t eat fast enough, consider preserving them with this Quick Pickle recipe from the amazing team at the UNSIG Food Lab. Bonus points if you re-use a glass jar to store it! 

• Pre-warm your chosen jar (it should be heat-proof) by pouring in hot water

• Create your quick pickle mix:

  • In a small saucepan, heat a mixture of 100% vinegar (any will work, apart from balsamic), 24% sugar, 12% salt 

• Chop your veggies as desired

• Place them in a heat-proof jar, after you’ve emptied the jar of the hot water

• Pour the the quick pickle mix over the veggies and seal

• Allow the jar to cool, ideally waiting a few days before consumption for the veggies to fully pickle

• If sealed well and stored in a cool, dark place, this will last you through the winter!

SHARE

For the first edition of the newsletter, we wanted to tell the story of Melting Pot! Back in November 2024, the future Melting Pot team assembled at Climathon Zürich - after 32 intense hours of ideating, prototyping and pitching, we won one of the cash prizes from the City of Zürich, and Melting Pot was officially born: a new Zürish-based initiative aimed at solving a dual-affliction of cities, loneliness and food waste. 

United by a strong sense of mission, but still in the very early stages of ideation, we joined the Impact Hub Circular Economy Incubator in the first half of 2025. During those 6 months, we were really stretched, and road-tested our first food save apéro on Earth Day 2025 at the Zürich Impact Hub.

During the event, we received a lot of feedback from the attendees, and overwhelmingly we heard two things: (1) People want to save food! Whether it’s to save money, convenience or to help the planet, Zürich residents are on board for food saving, (2) Most people don’t know where to start, or what to do. 

This is how the newsletter was born. The truth is, we at Melting Pot are just like you: we didn’t know where to start, we had no idea what the food saving ecosystem was like, but we felt really concerned by food saving, both for our wallets and for the planet. At our Earth Day apéro, we got a lot of compliments on how amazing the spread was, with people even asking us “Is this really all saved food?”. And yes, it really was, and no, we are not some crazy food saving gurus with amazing connections to the food save scene. We used readily available and easily accessible food saving platforms like Secend, GoNina and Madame Frigo. The truth is, anyone could have set up this apéro. And with these newsletters, we will show you how!

That’s it for now! Thank you for reading our newsletter, and thank you for being early supporters of this brand new initiative. We highly value our community feedback, as our mission is, first and foremost, to serve YOU. Hit reply to this e-mail and let us know what you think. And check out our website if you want to learn more.

Mit freundlichen grüßen,

Anne, on behalf of the Melting Pot team