More and more restaurants and organizations are joining the Green Mondays movement. The movement is a spinoff of Meatless Mondays and will offer minimal meat and a lot of vegetarian options on the said day. The new member into the fold is Dining Services.
Dining Services' decision to go green aims to make dining hall food more local and easier on the environment. For examples, 55 percent of all dining food is now sourced from vendors from a 250-mile radius of Morningside Heights Campus in Columbia University.
"What it comes down to is looking at each year and increasing our sustainability efforts," Vicki Dunn, Executive Director of Dining Services said. She adds, "As sustainability is becoming more important to people, there's more opportunities for us to increase those efforts."
Also, Green Mondays aims to raise awareness on the health and environmental need to reduce meat consumption. Dining Services said that they are working with Sysco to ensure that the fish they buy is harvest in a socially responsible way, the Columbia Spectator reported.
Overfishing has decimated many types of aquaculture such as tuna, mackerel, and even freshwater eel. Their populations are now just a fraction of what they were once. One of the organizations which closely watch overfishing is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. Their guidelines are used to avoid overfishing to critical levels.
Green Mondays in UCLA started when Bruins for Animals approached the UCLA Dining Services for more sustainable meals once a week. Bruin Plate officials wanted to remove all meat from the menu during Green Mondays but said some animal-based ingredients like dairy products and eggs will still be served, according to the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability of UCLA.
"If you see water coming out of a faucet, you see it being used right there, but when you see food on your plate, it's not an automatic light bulb," Adam Gushansky, a student and campaigns officer of Bruins for Animals said. "Seeing a pound of beef doesn't make you think 'this took 1,000 gallons (of water) to raise.'"
Dining Services could help push sustainable food into the mainstream and actually change the very attitudes people have towards food. If you agree, hit share and help spread the word!
