Solving the Climate Crissis One Meal at a Time

– We’re trying to get all the canteens and catering on campus at University of Oslo (UiO) to go fully plant-based for the climate, says Amber van Vliet (22). 

As president of Plant-Based Campus (PBC), van Vliet leads a small group of people trying to change which food is offered in the canteens at UiO and other universities around Oslo. As she explains:

– We want to make it easier for students, staff, and everyone else on campus to make a more sustainable choice. We think that if all the meals that people eat in one day on campus are more plant-based, or even fully plant-based, that that would do a lot of good for the climate. 

Go Big or Go Home

While the canteens at UiO still serve a majority of dishes that include meat and dairy, Frederikke Eatery does serve a Green Buffet where students can buy vegetarian and vegan meals at a lower price than the other meals. Despite thinking of this as a step in the right direction, van Vliet explains PBC’s goal is bigger still. 

– The ultimate goal is a 100% plant-based campus. That is how we phrase it. For a lot of people, people that we meet during outreach, it often sounds a bit extreme. 100% change of the food system is pretty scary for many people, I think, but we use that because it’s fairly easy to understand. You can be pro or against, but there is not much discussion about the understanding of what we want. 

Meat-less

– There’s quite a consensus that we need to reduce our level of meat consumption, Johannes Rudjord Volden explains

Rudjord Volden works as a postdoctoral researcher at UiO and the Centre for Global Sustainability. During his PhD he researched consumer perspectives and experiences trying to replace meat in a Norwegian context.

– In Norway, we’ve doubled our meat consumption since the 60’s. And although the growth has flattened out now, and consumption has increasingly shifted from red meat to poultry, we still have relatively high meat consumption per person. So that drives up the footprint of our diet. 

Volden also expresses that despite the fact that there are differences in the environmental impact of certain types of meat, the emissions of meat as a category in general lie higher than other food groups. 

– Overall, red meat produces significantly higher emissions than white meat. Of course all meat is not the same, but compared to the other categories of food that we eat, meat has a high environmental impact.

A lot of plant-based options, therefore, have much lower emissions than meat.

– We know that a lot of the plant-based options, at least in their unprocessed or minimally processed forms, have very low emissions, says Volden.

Scarce Change

Aside from the resistance any organisation trying to reach a goal struggles with, the general attitude of Norwegians towards plant-based diets and food is a prominent hurdle in PBC’s fight for fully plant-based canteens. 

When asked about whether she thinks the food culture in Norway is very meat-focussed, van Vliet explains that compared to other countries Norway’s options for plant-based foods remain quite scarce. 

– I’m from the Netherlands and I’m half German, and we’re always going from the Netherlands to Germany for the supermarkets. The amount of vegan and vegetarian alternatives is so big. Also in the Netherlands it is way better than in Norway. 

Van Vliet states that people are often quite surprised by this. 

– Norway is quite a progressive country, so a lot of people I talk to expected Norway to be more plant-based friendly. 

Part of why it’s hard to get through to Norwegians, van Vliet says, is the cultural aspect of food. 

– I think Norwegians love to frame it as part of their culture, so then you can’t change it. Because traditions are hard to change, you know. That might be a bit of a problem, because I think change is part of life. 

Consumer Concerns

While a change in food habits would require active participation from a wider audience, something Rudjord Volden explains there has been quite some interest in in Norway, the general population faces a number of difficulties in making different choices. Especially regarding the idea of trying to replace meat one-for-one with plant-based alternatives. 

– If you look at plant-based alternatives, there’s a double challenge. 

 Volden states consumers struggle with feeling like they do not have the competence to create nutritious plant-based meals, but at the same time don’t trust meat replacements. 

– There’s a lot of skepticism towards meat replacement products or substitutes, which are seen as overly processed, unhealthy and «fake foods,» explains Volden.

Outsourced Effort

Volden research shows that to make it easier for customers to choose a plant-based option, a change in our general food system is needed. 

– One takeaway is the need for zooming out from the individual consumer and think about how we can create good food environments and create a society and a food culture that invites for more sustainable food consumption. 

According to Rudjord Volden, serving more plant-based foods in canteens could be helpful in making it easier for consumers to make that choice. 

– What was interesting in my research was also that in cases where my participants had good options in their canteens, for instance, they felt it was a lot easier. 

Not having to think about the logistics of preparing the food also helped making the choice to eat plant-based dishes easier, says Volden. 

– They didn’t have to prepare the food, they didn’t have to think about how to make a proper good meal from plant-based ingredients, that was done for them. 

Outsourcing the preparation of plant-based meals can then also make the choice more accessible. 

– If the canteen can offer good plant-based meals that are prepared in a good way, where the dishes are made to be nutritious, filling, and sufficiently high in protein, that’s something consumers care about, it makes it easier, says Volden 

Green Allies  

PBC UiO is one chapter of a movement that has spread itself all over Scandinavia. Each chapter of the movement utilises the same strategy in an attempt to reach their goal, as van Vliet states: 

– We do outreach, so we have a stand with our table banner, and we’re trying to get signatures from students and staff, from everyone that is somehow involved with the campus. We’re going to show them to the student parliament and then we hope that the student parliament will vote for a 100% plant-based campus. 

Next to working closely together with other chapters of the PBC movement, van Vliet and her team also work together with organisations at UiO. One of these organisations is the Green Office, a team of students employed by UiO who work together around the theme of sustainability, provide services for sustainability focused student associations, and organise events for students and staff. One of the organisations they provide support for is PBC. 

Many Hands Make Light Work

– We’ve been collaborating with them on and off for a few years now, says Kaja Jeanne Grøthe. 

Grøthe is a student employee working at the Green Office. 

– Right now they are, for example, renting our office space on a weekly basis, so they have their meetings here, which is really cool. Also, we collaborate with them sometimes for different events, describes Grøthe. 

Collaborating with, and offering student organisations a space to meet and continue their efforts to make the campus at UiO, and the world, more sustainable is something they find very important, too. As Grøthe explains:

– We collaborate a lot with student associations who are often on the same mission as we are, trying to make student life, and life in general, greener. By collaborating with them, we can work towards a common goal together and make each other stronger. 

To be able to help student initiatives financially, the Green Office also gives out “Green Grants” to student organisations. PBC, too, has received such a grant, which van Vliet says has been helping them out financially.  

– The Green Office has been great with support for us. They have a Green Grant, so we got 30 000 kroner for our project and that’s been helping us a lot, she concludes.