The Hamilton Sustainability Coordinators (HSC), a student organization previously known as the Recycling Task Force, recently helped Bon Appétit implement a change in McEwen’s dining options for this semester. The change, originally branded under the name “Meatless Mondays,” replaces meat- containing dishes with vegetarian and vegan variants on Mondays during lunch and dinner. Though heralded by substantial student support, the now renamed “Green Mondays” have brought about some controversy in regards to both how they were implemented and the effect that they attempt to achieve. Several Hamilton Sustainability Coordinators spoke with
The Spectator
about the rationale and implementation of Green Mondays.
First of all, why have Green Mon- days?
Going meatless is a sustainability is- sue — the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock are more than the entire transportation sector is combined, and we’re always trying to decrease our shower time or usage of cars, but what you can really do easily is eat less meat. There was an Oxford study that showed that the single biggest change you can make for the environment is to go vegan, or eat a plant-based diet. When people say, “I care about the environment, but I don’t want to limit my meat consumption,” what they’re really saying is, “I want this problem to be fixed, but I don’t want to do my part in fixing it.” It’s not just greenhouse gases — animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, species extinctions, ocean dead zones, and decreasing biodiversity.
Some criticism of the initiative concerns how veganism is forced upon students. What are your thoughts on this?
The criticisms we’ve been getting target why veganism is bad, but Meatless Mondays don’t mean veganism: it’s two meals out of the entire week. We’re not forcing anyone to go vegan and in fact, there are still animal protein options at McEwen, which is why we’ve rebranded to “Green Monday” from “Meatless Monday.” It’s really about reducing, and doing our share to make sustainable choices as individuals on this campus. It’s not about cutting out choices — the deli, pizza, and soup sections still have meat options.
Other criticisms target how Green Mondays were implemented — can you comment on how the HSC went about this?
There was a little confusion between us and Bon Appétit when it was getting implemented. We were under the impression it was only going to be lunch at McEwen on Mondays, but the first one was all three meals and using mostly vegan options instead of just vegetarian, so it got off to a rocky start. We weren’t trying to make everyone vegan for a day, but I think we’ve gotten that squared away now. Green Mondays are now two meals, cutting back on things like vegan cheese and just getting rid of meat. We’re trying to provide things that people are into, like the mac & cheese bar and eggplant parmesans on Monday, and we’re hoping that these will be things that people actually want to eat and won’t even care that they’re meatless.
We didn’t go through Student Assembly to do this initiative, but we’ve never gone through SA before, and we weren’t aware that that was something that needed to be done. We’ve now spoken to the Food Committee of SA and they seem to be totally on board with it now. Also, we really care about students’ opinions, and we made this decision with a lot of student input. Before Green Monday was implemented, students had an opportunity to fill out a survey and we actually got 542 responses with around 80 percent support, so coming into it, we were thinking it was a very popular initiative. Hamilton cares about the environment and people want to make the most responsible choices they can, so we weren’t surprised by that. We faltered in our method of how to reach students, but we did send out surveys and emails, put up signs, and ran a table in front of McEwen every day for a week leading up to it. Now, we’re trying to reorient and send out weekly emails but it was never our intention to one-sidedly implement this.
So what are the changes being planned for Green Mondays, if any?
Some of them have already taken place — we got rid of breakfast, replaced vegan meals with vegetarian meals, sent out an email with a facts sheet, a survey for students to voice their opinions on Green Monday, and we keep asking people for suggestions of what meals they would like to see on those days. We’ve gotten a lot of responses, which Bon Appétit is using. Starting on Sunday, we sent out an email saying what was going to be served on that Monday. We’re trying to gather what people actually want to eat and get feedback on how we can make it better. We’re not trying to just push this on people strictly the way we want it. Everyone is strongly encouraged to take the Google survey we sent out to say what kind of vegetarian meals they want to see. If people have any suggestions, Bon Appétit has been really good about incorporating them. We know some people haven’t seen the emails or weren’t aware any of this is happening — there’s a lot of message fatigue, but unfilter or check for emails from the Hamilton Sustainability Coordinators.
