At the conference, Katrin Bienge from the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy pointed out that animal products for human nutrition cause almost 80% of greenhouse gases. She illustrated this with a list of the ten most popular dishes in Polish school canteens and how much CO2 they produce per serving. The worst result by far? Pork steaks! They produce a CO2 footprint more than twelve times higher than that of a plate of vegetable soup. Joanna Wis-Bielewicz of the Polish organisation Stowarzyszenie Gmin Polska Sieć PNEC (The Association of Municipalities Polish Network (‘Energie Cités’) also spoke in favour of a climate-friendly diet with more plant-based meals. She reported on the tangible consequences of climate change. These are already being felt in Poland today, especially as a result of increased desertification and the heightened risk of forest fires.

Katrin Bienge explains how we can eat in a more climate-friendly manner. Photo: GIZ/EUKI

The CLIKIS project targets the reduction of CO2 emissions in Polish school kitchens, mainly through train-the-trainers seminars. Kitchen managers also receive further training in workshops, where they learn more about the connection between climate change & nutrition and receive practical tips for energy-saving school kitchen operations. The ecological footprints of 24 German school canteens had already been analysed in the earlier CLIKIS project, so the valuable experience gained in Germany was simply transferred to the Polish school canteens.

A bird’s eye view of different types of vegetables. Photo: pixabay.com

‘Avoid, reduce, substitute’ – Katrin Bienge referred to these three key terms for climate-friendly school kitchens at the Krakow conference. She also suggested several concrete measures, such as consuming less meat, replacing butter more often with vegetable oils and substituting dairy products with herbal alternatives. Malte Schmidthals of the Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) also mentioned the use of more efficient kitchen appliances and improved planning, because well-conceived menus would result in much less food ending up in the bin. Tomasz Pawelec of PNEC informed the conference participants that CLIKIS had analysed the menus at five Polish schools, hosted workshops for cooks and made recommendations for savings measures.

Tomasz Pawelec presents the results of the CLIKIS project. Photo: GIZ/EUKI