Sao Paulo, Brazil
Making Progress*
Sao Paulo has the largest school system in Brazil. So when the State education secretary decided in 2016 to participate in Meatless Monday twice a month, it had a huge impact (Meatless Monday is a campaign to get people around the world to go meat-free one day a week) reaching 1.7 million students. That’s 3.4 million vegetarian meals a month, and cuts 1,530 tons of meat out every year!
The schools serve a vegan version of the classic Brazilian dish, feijoada, with black beans, rice, kale and other vegetables. So students get something that is both familiar and vegetarian.
What’s next: Sao Paulo has shown that it is committed to making plant-based meals available to its residents. To get this commitment to the next level, they could try having two dedicated vegetarian days a week in all schools. That would be more than 13 million vegetarian meals a month!
What’s next?
Our supporters are challenging cities to race to the top on meat reduction to protect our climate, forests, water and human health. On the path of reducing meat consumption and production by half by 2050, we’re asking/challenging cities to begin with two dedicated vegetarian meals in all public canteens weekly by 2020.