Copenhagen, Denmark
First Mover!*
First Movers are cities, local governments, or public institutions (like universities, schools or hospitals) that have at least one meal per week that is completely dedicated to vegetarian foods. This is often alongside other great programs like public education and organic sourcing, but the main criteria is having at least one dedicated vegetarian meal or day per week.
In September 2019, Copenhagen officially passed a new food strategy that aims at cutting emissions by 25% by 2025 via meat reduction and increase of plant-based food served in around 70.000 public meals every day in, for example, kindergartens.
Also in October 2019, the mayor of Copenhagen joined 13 other mayors affiliated with the C40 in signing a commitment to become a Good Food City, which includes considerably reducing meat served in their public institutions as part of their response to the global climate emergency.
In a declaration during the Mayors Summit of the C40 cities network in Copenhagen, the undersigned mayors committed to align their food procurement to a ‘planetary health diet’ – rich in plant-based food with less food from animal sources – by 2030. This would equate to a maximum average of 300 grams of meat per person per week.
Earlier, the city of Copenhagen was an early adopter of sustainable food sourcing as it has:
- Adopted the goal of serving 88% organic food in all public institutions.
- Serves nearly 160,000 meals per day in 900 public school kitchens.
- In 2007, Copenhagen founded the independent House Of Food Foundation to improve the quality of city food.
- Savings and benefits: The city of Copenhagen has set an ambitious target to become carbon neutral by 2025.
What’s next?
Copenhagen could actually move into our highest ranking category by publicly committing to reduce the volume of meat and dairy served to citizens and replace it with healthy, organic meat free meals for students and public employees.
Greenpeace’s global challenge:
Our supporters are challenging cities to race to the top on meat reduction to protect our climate, forests, and water. We aim to have at least 50 cities commit to serving two vegetarian meals (no meat or dairy options) in all public canteens weekly by the end of 2019. We expect to have at least 100 global cities make this or a greater commitment toward less and better meat and more plant-rich meals by 2020.