Greenpeace believes that the generalization of meatless meals to all components of public catering could have a major impact on the environment.

The NGO therefore calls for a review of the proposal in the Climate and Resilience law and to rally to the option defended by the Citizens' Convention.

Could the generalization of meatless meals help fight against global warming?

This is what Greenpeace thinks.

In its future Climate Law, the government wishes to experiment with vegetarian menus for local authorities.

An insufficient measure according to the NGO, which affirms that if the executive were more ambitious and proposed this for all public collective catering, the impact on the environment could be major.

An option that the executive rejects to date, arguing that the implementation of such a provision would run into difficulties with regard to feasibility and social acceptance. 

Have a higher carbon impact

"If the measure remains as it is, barely 15% of meals would be affected," said a spokesperson for Greenpeace.

This represents, according to the NGO, 0.14 million tonnes of carbon equivalent saved.

"We have redone the calculation by imagining that this measure was applied to all public catering on a voluntary basis", as proposed by the Citizen's Convention on the climate.

According to these results, there would be enough to change the carbon impact quite widely, which would thus be "five to ten times higher" and would exceed "one million tonnes of CO2 equivalent saved".

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The government, which recently argued over meatless meals in canteens, rejects this proposal for the moment and says going too fast on vegetarian menus raises questions.

On the one hand, in terms of feasibility, especially for small municipalities.

On the other hand, on that of social acceptance.

However, Greenpeace affirms in its study that more than 200 municipalities as well as dozens of structures (hospitals, schools, prisons, etc.) already offer a daily vegetarian option, without this representing any additional cost.