Already, 70% of the products sold in our restaurant are vegetarian or vegan and 30% of meals contain meat. Our goal is to gradually move VU Amsterdam toward a standard vegetarian range of food on campus. Meat and fish will remain available on request to begin with, and special wishes to comply with dietary or religious requirements can also be met.
These moves form part of our overall ambition and are designed to encourage more VU Amsterdam users to make planet-friendly food choices in our restaurants. At the same time, we aim to make users aware that the power is in their hands to make a difference.
While part of our campus community is ready to embrace the change this requires, many others are not yet ready to take that step. Some people want things to move forward faster, whereas others are yet to be convinced of the merits of restricting this freedom of choice. It is also important to ensure our campus community shares our choices, so that we are all together in committing to sustainable food and drink solutions.
Various initiatives are already in place, including Meatless Monday and Veganuary: throughout January, the restaurant in the Main Building is serving exclusively vegetarian food.
A planet-friendly choice is a combination of several factors in which we aim to strike a balance: a lower carbon footprint, health aspects, local solutions as well as factors such as biodiversity and scarcity. Price is also often a key factor in the choice of which products to buy.
To help drive the move toward planet-friendly restaurants on the university campus, we will be teaming up with Eurest in the coming period to do a number of things:
- We will analyse which products have the largest carbon footprint and display the results alongside the products in the restaurants (reveal the impact), and gradually set out about reducing those products that do not meet our planet-friendly criteria.
- Each week we will randomly designate a different day to serve exclusively vegetarian food. Eurest will also contribute by raising the quality of the vegetarian food we offer.
- We will lay down sustainability standards for meat and set a target for 80% of our products to be organic, seasonal and locally sourced.
- Our standard banqueting lunch menu will comprise vegetarian options.
- To reduce waste, we are experimenting with buffet lunches where you spread your own sandwich instead of using the lunch bags which are currently provided.