Why bother!

Today was spent in a meeting at the University of Nottingham. A great meeting, positive things were said and learned by all. But let's discuss catering....

The food was well labelled, i.e. Meat, Meat and Fish and Vegetarian. Just having the labels is a bonus in some cases. What I want to illustrate is waste. There were, confirmed, three vegetarians at the event and they proobably (and mercifully) catered for a few more. Because the usual happened, the carnivores on seeing the veggie delights fell upon them and cleaned up faster than Kim and Aggie on speed. And, as the image below demostrates, showed little interest in the meat.

The empty platter on the right is where the veggie snacks were; at the end of the workshop the 'unnamed meat on a stick' and 'sausage in something' options were still there waiting to be thrown away.

So given that (further reading)

• 8% of the World's fresh water supply goes to meat production,
• during the 1984 famine, Ethiopia was growing linseed cake and rapeseed meal for European livestock while its own people were dying of hunger and,
• Yvo de Boer, head of the UN agency that hosts international talks on climate change, has said that one of the best solutions to the planet's most burning problem would be "for us all to become vegetarians"
• And then, to add insult to environmental injury, we end up throwing most of it away at the end of a buffet because the meat-eaters liked the look of the veggie option, why do we bother.

University caterers, conference organisers and anyone else who is remotely interested in the planet - take the first step. Make all university provided buffets veggie.