Inflight Meat free monday?
Image courtesy: www.flickr.com/photos/newzealandorbust
Have you heard of Meatless Monday or Meat Free Mondays or Meatless Monday? While their name don’t make a strick distinction from each other, I found similar a little discussion on one of the Finnair websites accidentally. Chris Jordan once visualized what we consume on airplanes and one can argue what we eat has as much impact to the environment as the disposable cups used onboard. What do you think? Let’s have a look.
“I would like Helsinki Airport and Finnair to make a strong green commitment and offer a chance for its travelers to contribute to a greener planet and ofset carbon miles. The meat free monday could also be a marketing campaign for the airline to be leading green airline.” –Sanjoo
“Now this would be something to consider. In Finland it has been a huge issue on school-level, to provide children one nourishing vegetarian meal per week/month/whatever the time span. But schools are publicly financed, Helsinki Airport and Finnair are private. As flying by definition is not ecological, but the topic is interesting, this could be one angle to approach the topic. Thanks Sanjoo for suggesting, I’m 100% behind you!” –Yalotar
“Hey you veggies! I must fly on weekly basis because of my work. Try to step in our business travellers shoes once in a while. We are not flying for fun and deserve to have a freedom to decide what to eat.” –frequent business traveller
“How about if you could still eat meat on Meat free Monday, but you would just need to pre-order your meat meal? Just like vegetarians are now ordering a veggie meal beforehand. Not too tough!” –Mirva
Well, here Mirva’s got a point. Why should we ask for a vegetarian meal or vegan meal? Why are meaty ones the defaults? As Sunstein and Thaler of Nudge would say that default has a gigantic impact on people’s choices–many people will take whatever option requires the least effort, or the path of least resistance (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008:84). Less GHG emission onboard may lie on what the default is rather than whether the flight is meat free on every monday.
Meat Free Monday recently reported that Malmo Aviation, a Swedish airline, has become the first in the world to join the Meat Free Monday campaign to cut its carbon emissions, and raise environmental awareness. Malmo Aviation has introduced MFM meals on all flights departing on a Monday in a bid to cut its carbon emissions and raise environmental awareness. The company calculates that its meat-free flights will save 35 tonnes of carbon annually and more than five tonnes of meat, which is what 65 Swedes would eat in a year.
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1. Thaler. R. H., Sunstein. C. R. (2001) Nudge; Improving Decisiuons About Health, Wealth, and Hapiness, New York, Penguin Books.
2. Meat Free Monday, 2011. Support Meat Free Monday-Eat less meat for a better planet-News. [online] (24 October 2011) Available at: (http://www.meatfreemondays.com/news/) [Accessed 11 December 2011].
