Winter Rolls In; Swiss Waste Analyzed; Home Owners Howl At Roche

News For 21 November 2023

There's good news on the way on the weather front: the incessant rain over the preceding weeks will finally take a pause.  The bad news is that temperatures are expected to drop below 5 degrees centigrade in our region.  According to MeteoNews, winter will arrive starting tomorrow and the snow, which had been already falling at higher elevations in the mountains will reach down to below 800 meters in the mountainous regions. By Thursday this week, temperatures will drop below 0 even in the lowlands of Switzerland.

**********

In 2022 The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment opened 16.5 tons of garbage bags in 33 municipal areas to "analyze" the waste people generate in the country.  Compared to the last survey from 2012, the good news is that the annual output of trash per person has decreased by 58kg to 148kg according to Katrin Schneeberger director of the bureau.  Unfortunately, about one-third of the waste is accounted for by food products, and the Office for the Environment estimates that this could easily be further reduced through greater recycling efforts.

**********

The homeowners in the Wettstein district of Basel have launched a campaign against Roche to prevent its latest building plans. On Friday the global pharmaceutical giant announced a new 1.2 billion CHF investment plan in its campus on the Rhein.  However, the association representing the homeowners said that residents should be given a few years of quiet after uninterrupted construction since 2008 at the Roche campus site.  Furthermore, they demand that plans for a third Roche tower, already planned, be abandoned.