There are more than 800 huts around the Alps. One of them is Sewenhütte, in central Switzerland, at an altitude of 2,150 metres. I spoke to the hut guardians Ursula and Walter Gehrig about their food and waste management in the summer season.

At Sewenhütte, meals are made with fresh ingredients as much as possible, which means deliveries are carefully planned to prevent food from spoiling in storage.

“It’s not about having different products, but rather having products that can be used for several meals,” said Ursula. The helicopter, their preferred means of grocery shopping transport, delivers around two tonnes of food once a week and costs them around €1,100.

The secret is in the storage

When the delivery arrives, Ursula and Walter safely store everything for the coming days. There’s storage space in the kitchen, the basement, and even on some shelves above the couple's bed.

Dairy products are stored in a concrete cooler outside, chilled by mountain spring water. However, as summers get warmer, it's not as cold as it used to be.

On our dinner menu is a veggie soup, salad, pasta with either vegetables or meat, and a dessert. Meal planning gets more challenging with people who have dietary restrictions, or groups that stay for longer, as the team is reluctant to serve the same meal twice.

What about leftovers? They're eaten by the employees, and any remaining vegetables are mixed into the soup the next day. The staff also directly call you out when your eyes are bigger than your stomach.

“If a school class visits, we tell them they’re only allowed to eat portion by portion, so plates come back without leftovers,” said Ursula.

After breakfast – which is an open buffet with homemade bread, cheese, cereals, and fruit – Ursula shows me a bowl with very little organic waste to be added to their compost, which is then taken care of by animals.

At Sewenhütte, waste is flown back down by helicopter, so Ursula and Walter buy food in bulk to limit the amount of packaging waste. In the Alps, there are no bins on hiking trails; visitors' trash either stays with them, in the huts, or ends up left lying around in nature or back down in the valley. Visitors are encouraged to take their personal waste back down after their stay.

Footprints only

“Visitors should certainly carry out their own waste, but they can also contribute by preparing responsibly, using reusable containers and bottles, respecting the limitations of mountain infrastructure, and understanding that preserving these environments sometimes requires accepting fewer conveniences,” I was told by Lottie Mulligan, community manager and adventure planning expert at Alpenventures Unguided, an organisation offering travel plans for self-guided trips in the mountains.

Some huts help visitors with preventing waste. In France's Vanoise region, for instance, mountain refuges operate a reusable lunch-box scheme for trekkers on hut-to-hut tours.

“Hikers are encouraged to bring their own reusable lunch container, which the huts fill with a packed lunch, significantly reducing disposable packaging,” Mulligan explained.

Despite many efforts to prevent it, people still litter.

“One of the challenges is that many people now view the mountains as a tourist attraction rather than a natural and often fragile environment,” said Mulligan.

As we walk back down to the valley into the land of trash bins and infrastructure, carrying our small trash bag with a couple of snack wrappings, I think about how we could all try some inconvenience from time to time.