As part of the Earth Day initiative, our Mensas and Cafeterias are offering only climate-friendly meals on 22 April. In accordance with the current Corona Protection Ordinance, six of our facilities are currently open and provide a take-away offer.
To draw attention to the impact of our diet on the climate, on this day only food and drinks that cause a maximum of 50 percent of the CO2 emissions of a standard meal will be offered in our facilities. This campaign, is the Studentenwerk Leipzig's contribution to the Earth Day initiative, which is celebrated on 22 April all over the world.
As early as 1970, Earth Day marked a day of action for the Earth at US universities and in schools. Earth Day 2021 is dedicated to sustainable nutrition following the motto "Every bite counts. Protect what you eat – protect our earth". A good enough reason for the Studentenwerk Leipzig to get involved with a special offer in our Mensas and Cafeterias.
From cultivating and producing ingredients to food preparation, our nutrition causes carbon dioxide, as our ecotrophologist Anja Troch reports: "For Earth Day, we have selected recipes from our database that do not use ingredients that are particularly harmful to the climate, such as beef, rice or highly processed ingredients. These dishes cause less than half the CO2 compared to conventional dishes."
For example, our Cafetria am Park will offer a vegan flatbread burger filled with spinach and soy mince. The soy beans for the organic tofu come from Austria and Germany. At our Mensa am Medizincampus, a tomato sauce will be made with regional turkey meat and served with wholemeal noodles. The wok dish features seasonal, fresh vegetables with lupine tempeh, produced in Leipzig. A vegan rhubarb pound cake and an apple-field salad smoothie are also on the menu. The Mensaria am Botanischen Garten offers tofu steak in hazelnut breading, tabbouleh and a wild garlic pesto.
"We are well aware that we can only set a symbolic signal with this day of action," adds Uwe Kubaile, head of the department for Mensas & Cafeterias and central purchasing. "The topic of sustainability is very important to us at the Studentenwerk. We have already achieved some improvements in recent years. But we always have to keep an eye on profitability as well, not just since Corona. At the moment, we are looking at how we can make our menus even more climate-friendly in general. Possibly there will be a separate menu line with climate-friendly dishes in the future," continues Kubaile.
