Veggie Week at ETH

This Saturday, 1 October, is the official World Vegetarian Day. Switzerland marks this occasion with external page Swisstainable Veggie Day: 1,000 restaurants throughout the country highlight vegetarian dishes on their menus, aiming to set a milestone for sustainable gastronomy.

ETH’s restaurants are also taking part – not just with one day of vegetarian menus but all week long, as part of ETH Veggie Week. Starting this Monday and running until Friday, 30 September, the ETH restaurants and cafeterias on Zentrum, Hönggerberg and Oerlikon campuses will be exclusively offering vegetarian dishes, either on certain days or all week long (see the overview below). This also applies to ETH street food vendors.

“Veggie Week reaffirms ETH’s commitment to working together with its caterers to promote more responsible consumption,” explains Claudia Zingerli, who has headed up ETH Sustainability since June 2022. “When it comes to nutrition, there’s a big opportunity to steer behaviour in a more climate-friendly, ethical and healthy direction. This is why the food on offer in ETH’s restaurants and cafeterias has undergone constant development. We’re glad to have Veggie Week as a platform for bringing vegetarian nutrition closer to the ETH community. Hopefully we can convince some people who are still skeptics, and we encourage everyone to try out new things!”

Spotlight on sustainability

The Sustainable Gastronomy project, launched in January 2022, aims to make campus dining at ETH more sustainable over the long term. The project will run for three years (2022 to 2024) and includes all four categories of sustainability: climate protection, conserving resources, social and ethical issues, and health. The catering companies external page SV Group and external page Compass Group are part of the project.

“As part of the Sustainable Gastronomy project, our caterers have set the goal of reducing the carbon footprint of their dining options. This is connected to reducing the amount of meat we offer,” explains Zingerli. This also connects to another one of ETH’s aims: striving for carbon neutrality in line with the external page federal government’s climate program.

Drop by, learn something and win prizes

If you want to learn more about the Sustainable Gastronomy project in additional to sampling vegetarian delicacies, there’s now a special opportunity to do so: you can visit the ETH Sustainability stand to chat with the experts and take part in a quiz on environmentally friendly eating – prizes include a gift certificate to enjoy a vegetarian meal at FUSION meal & coffee or at Mensa Polyterrasse. The stand will be at the Mensa Polyterrasse on Zentrum campus on Thursday, 29 September.