Presentation of Fossil Free Award

The WWF Section for Italian Switzerland and the association Fossil Free Switzerland have opted to present the Fossil Free Award to TicInsect, a start-up based in the canton of Ticino. The award ceremony took place at the USI Startup Centre located on the new Campus Ost, which is jointly run by the University of Italian Switzerland (USI) and University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Italian Switzerland (SUPSI). TicInsect is part of the start-up incubator there.

This award certifies that the Ticino start-up, which was founded in 2018, is committed to playing a proactive role in an economy based on renewable resources. In a press release, TicInsect quotes the jury’s reasoning that the company distances itself from the use of fossil fuels and makes a contribution to achieving the zero emissions target by 2040.

TicInsect uses the larvae of the Black Soldier Fly to obtain high value-added by-products from the organic waste: noble proteins, oil for alternative fuels and agricultural fertilizers. In this context, TicInsect is seeking to address the problem of food waste: Switzerland alone generates 2.8 million tons of food waste per year (with 39 percent attributable to private households and 37 percent coming from the food industry). At the same time, the global population is on the rise, which increases demand for noble proteins. To cover this need, global fish stocks are currently being overexploited, while meat production is based on soya cultivation, which in turn comes at the cost of biodiversity.

TicInsect draws the following conclusion from this situation: “A system as constantly in debt as ours, which uses more resources each year than it can regenerate, needs to be reformed to be sustainable, i.e. to ensure that it meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.