Schools and Universities Are Moving to Plant-Based Solutions
/As many of us know, a whole-food plant-based diet is known to have countless benefits for personal health, longevity, athleticism, and the environment, among many others. These positive consequences of a whole food plant-based diet are being recognized the world over including in the education sector. Over the course of the past few years, an increasing number of schools and universities have been on their way to establishing plant-based lifestyles among their students and teachers.
Our first such example takes place in The Big Apple itself—New York City. In 2019, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that beginning in the 2019-2020 school year, all New York City public schools will have 'Meatless Mondays.' [1] This initiative was already implemented under a pilot program at 15 Brooklyn schools in the Spring of 2018.
In the ‘Meatless Monday’ scheme, students will be provided with healthy, all-vegetarian breakfast and lunch menus every Monday. Mayor Bill de Blasio further commented that "Cutting back on meat a little will improve New Yorkers' health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions." Moreover, as part of the environmental movement that our generation carries the burden of implementing, "expanding Meatless Mondays to all public schools to keep our lunch and planet green for generations to come." [1]
Since that initial announcement was made in the Spring of 2019, over a year has passed and the 2019-2020 school year has come to an end. During that time period, over 1,800 public schools in New York City served fully vegetarian breakfasts and lunches to their students. [2]
Now that the movement has gained a foothold is such a large, mainstream school system that serves over 1.1 million students, imagine if this could expand throughout the entirety of the country. A recent study published in the peer-reviewed international journal Global Environmental Change, found that if everyone in the United States participated in a meatless day, they could cut greenhouse gases by up to 22 percent—that’s nearly a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gases! [3]
The ‘Meatless Monday’ movement has not only rooted itself in New York City; on the contrary, it has already spread to over 150 United States universities not to mention the countless more across the world. Some notable places where ‘Meatless Monday’ has made itself at home include Brown University, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, and University of California, Berkeley. [4]
Some educational institutions have even gone a step further by eliminating some meat products all together. For example, since October 2016, the University of Cambridge’s catering service has replaced beef and lamb with plant-based products. This positive change has led to a remarkable decrease of 33 percent in carbon emissions per kilogram of food purchased and a 28 percent reduction in land use per kilogram of food purchased. [5]
The head of the university’s catering service notes that “Sustainability is extremely important to our students and staff and we wanted to ensure that we were not only responding to their needs, but pushing what was considered possible in a catering environment.”
Not only are universities taking action, but so are some schools. The Swan School in Oxford, England is one such school that has entirely removed red and white meat in addition to fish from its lunch menu. In addition, to enforce this rule, they have also prevented pupils from bringing in packed lunches from home. [6]
According to Headteacher Kay Wood, the initiative allows the school to “serve better quality meals for the same money.” Furthermore, there are also “huge environmental and sustainability benefits” for such actions [6]
Learning about so many places of education that are well on their way to going plant-based and eliminating animal products has been very inspiring. I’m sure that in the coming years, there is only going to be more support for the movement.
As mentioned earlier, the benefits of eating plant-based to the environment are paramount. We can all do our part by continuing to eat plant-based or transitioning to a plant-based lifestyle. To learn how to manage the transition, please check out my earlier blog linked here, on the very same topic. Like always, feel free to share your story and any feedback on the contact us page so that it may be featured on the testimonials page.
Sources:
[1] https://www.plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/plant-based-eric-adams-citywide-school-meatless-mondays
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378018306101?via%3Dihub
[4] https://www.meatlessmonday.com/meatless-monday-campus/
[5] https://www.plantbasednews.org/news/university-cambridge-ditching-red-meat-slashed-emissions
[6] https://www.plantbasednews.org/news/british-school-removes-meat-lunch-menu