In October 2019 YLVA announced that their UniCafe restaurants are removing beef from their lunch menu and cafe items by February 2020. UniCafe is owned and operated by YLVA which is the Student Union’s (HYY) asset manager, owned by the students of University of Helsinki. Similar decisions to remove beef from the menu have been made in university cafeterias in other countries before. In the announcement YLVA reported that removing beef will reduce the carbon footprint of their restaurants by 11%. Now that the time has come and beef has left the building, it is a good time to return to this topic.
Author Archives: Laura Kalliokoski
Life of Indigenous Languages
In 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019) declared by the United Nations raised awareness on the immense value of Indigenous languages diversity. It also drew attention to the alarming rate to which many languages are turning into sleeping languages and endangered.
Den uppenbara, lätt åsidosatta, men viktiga geografin
Att vi lätt betraktar världen ur en förenklad geografisk synvinkel är något jag vill lyfta fram i detta blogginlägg. Låt mig koppla tillbaka till inlägget av Charles Gore, där han snuddar på detta problem då han pratar om metodologisk nationalism i samband med ekologiska illusioner. Gore lyfter fram hur statistik om statliga utsläpp tyder på att vissa rika länder har minskat sina växthusgaser, men att vi ser en helt annan historia om vi även beaktar export och import (till länder som Kinas och Indiens fördel). Att våra samhällen inte existerar i enskilda containrar är något de flesta vet men som lätt förbises. I detta blogginlägg lyfter jag fram problemet Gore tar upp, men mer än så vill jag visa varför det är viktigt att betrakta geografin från olika synvinklar i studier och diskussioner om hållbar utveckling och andra komplexa samhälleliga fenomen.
Against Ecological Illusions
Standing around a cocktail table during lunch at the 2019 Sustainability Science Days in Espoo last May, I and my new-found colleagues marvelled at the cutlery. The spoons were plastic but they had been designed to look and feel like wood. Together we thought it would be good to find a name for these plastic “wooden” spoons. “Greenwash” did not seem right as it was associated with corporate behaviour and we dispersed to the next session – on sustainability transitions – without managing to find the right term.
Culture of the Future? A systems-eye view of cultured meat
What considerations must we have of a future food system as cultured meat enters the field? As the hype, technology, and industry around cultured meat grows (pun intended), questions about how it may impact the future of the food system loom just as large.