By Kay Watson
We’re busy in the Sustainability Congress ’24 Project team thinking of ways to make this year’s congress as sustainable as possible. Catering is an important aspect to consider and it’s our current priority to see where we can make impactful decisions. One way is to consider offering vegetarian and vegan options.
Even though there has been recently publicity about processed vegan and/or vegetarian food not being as green as we imagine, many studies still show that vegan and vegetarian diets have a much lower carbon footprint compared to an omnivorous diet.
In 2022, BBC Future worked with Sarah Bridle, professor of food, climate and society at the University of York in the UK, and freelance sustainability researcher Rebecca Lait to analyse our food emissions in a two-week experiment. They tracked the diets of a vegan, a vegetarian and a volunteer omnivore, who provided us with a baseline to compare our vegan and vegetarian data. Here are the results:
- Vegan CO2e emissions per week: 9.9kg
- Vegetarian CO2e emissions per week: 16.9kg
- Omnivore CO2e emissions per week: 48.9kg
As expected, the vegan diet scored the lowest emissions, coming in at less than two-thirds the emissions of the vegetarian diet and just one-fifth that of the omnivore’s diet.
If it were a competition, the vegan diet would certainly be the winner! But the result is not quite as clear cut as they had imagined. It turns out that on some days, vegetarianism came out as the diet with fewer emissions:
It seems that having the lowest carbon footprint as a vegan isn’t guaranteed – it depends on what you eat.
There were other interesting points to consider when measuring the carbon footprint of your diet too, for example, cooking efficiently – saving ovens for special occasions rather than everyday use, batch cooking to prepare food using a fraction of the energy and avoiding food waste, through careful planning and creative cooking.
To see all the results have a look at their article: The climate benefits of veganism and vegetarianism – BBC Future
We’ll keep you posted on progress of veggie and vegan options. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and suggestions on sustain options you consider important for this year’s congress. Look forward to seeing you in June!
We’re eager to hear from you!
Your thoughts and ideas are invaluable to us. Feel free to share them in the comments or drop us an email at sustainability.congress24@sietareu.org
Remember, even small changes can have a significant impact when adopted collectively. By leading by example and encouraging others to follow suit: Act today, impact tomorrow!
Warm regards,
Your SIETAR Congress ´24 Sustainability Team
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