Lille, France
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.
Since June 1, Lille, France has offered two meals weekly without meat or fish a week in the canteens of its public schools. It is the first major French city to implement such a policy. The Lille school district serves about 14,000 meals a day.
Way back in 2014, the city of Lille already implemented a vegetarian menu per week in the canteen. Now, Lille is in our highest ranked First Mover category in its approach to diversify food, reduce waste and protect the environment. The plant-rich dishes are prepared by the central kitchen of Lille, which is always trying new recipes to maximize taste with ingredients such as soy nuggets, omelets, kidney beans, chickpeas or other legumes.
These meals have won over the students and, at the same time, raised awareness of the risks that heavy meat industrial consumption has on personal health and its environmental consequences such as degradation of rivers and soils, biodiversity and climate.
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.